


Losing Sleep Tonight

by PunkyNemo (TheVampireCat)



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Sex, This is set post season 2 of Daredevil, UST, and yes more angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2018-12-19 20:06:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11905266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVampireCat/pseuds/PunkyNemo
Summary: She's standing on his doorstep and she's asking for redemption.He doesn't know if he has any to give.





	1. Are you busy serving sentences to prodigals and priests?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SwiftSnowmane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwiftSnowmane/gifts).



> This is my contribution to KastleRadio week on Tumblr. It's based on the song _Losing Sleep Tonight_ by John Moreland. It's likely to be four chapters and I'll be updating alongside _Be My Saviour_ which will remain my main focus.
> 
> Also I've never used this kind of a format for a fic before so we'll see how that works out.
> 
> It's for SwiftSnowMane because she reads all my nonsense and lets me flail about this silly ship.

_He saves her life._

 

_It's nothing new. He's done it before. There's every chance he’ll do it again._

 

_The truth is she didn't even realise it needed saving but she’s come to accept that that is just how things work in Hell’s Kitchen. They go from right to wrong in the blink of an eye and then from bad to worse even faster._

 

_She looks up, trying not to feel the weight of her sodden evening dress dragging her down, nor the cold water of the Hudson freezing her bones, turning her blood to ice._

 

_That's the blink-of-an-eye part. The part where less than a second ago she was standing on the big fucking yacht in front of her, rubbing shoulders with people she had no business rubbing shoulders with. Living in a world she had no business living in._

 

_And now she's here in the icy water, the giant gaping mouth of the river sucking her in like it's thirsty and she's a long cool drink of something exotic and forbidden._

 

_Somewhere between the yacht and the water there was Matt._

 

_Saving her life._

 

_Matt, dressed in a tuxedo and more handsome and charming than she remembered. Matt on her arm and her on his and nothing between them but that strange wrongness she tells herself she can't define._

 

_Matt suddenly looking stricken and more frightened than she's ever seen him and then grabbing her and throwing her overboard._

 

_Saving her life._

 

_Or not. Right now with the dress wrapping itself around her legs and the filthy water flooding her mouth it could go either way._

 

_But that's only the blink-of-an-eye part._

 

_The bad-to-worse part is faster. It always is._

 

_Above her a blast ricochets through the air followed by a terrible groaning sound and, through the choppy water, she sees a plume of orange and yellow, a bright red blaze as the hull of the boat explodes and the side buckles._

 

_There are screams followed by the roar of fire and then the terrible sound of screeching metal as a second explosion rips through the night._

 

_She needs to move. She knows this. She needs to get to the bank of the river because if the flying debris from the ship doesn’t kill her then the cold certainly will._

 

_She grapples with her dress, tries to grab the wet material in her fists so she can free herself, so she can kick and swim. But it's slippery and knotted around her legs and somehow those fucking crystal encrusted heels that murdered her feet the whole night haven't budged. They're still there, feebly poking at the heavy fabric, getting her more and more tangled. And she feels herself being dragged downwards, hard and fast, filthy water filling her nose and mouth. Her lungs. And her arms flail wildly and she tries to scream but she chokes and sputters._

 

_Above her there's another roar as the bow of the yacht crumples and more flames lick high towards the deck._

 

_She tries to shout Matt’s name but between the noise and the water it's nothing more than a whisper._

 

_And suddenly the semi-frozen Hudson doesn't feel so cold anymore._

 

~~~

 

She's here again. Standing on his front step, looking at him with those big blue eyes, bottle of whiskey in one hand, her shoes in the other.

 

She's here.

 

She's here and she shouldn't be.

 

He looks at her and he knows she knows it too.

 

They talked about this. They talked about how she couldn't come back. They talked it through for ages that night a million years ago when she ended up naked in his bed, thighs clamped over his hips, and face buried in his neck. That night in early February when everyone had just gotten over Christmas and started gearing up for Valentine's Day. That night when it felt like his whole world pulled itself back together for a second of the most shockingly painful clarity only to shatter again at his feet and leave him broken and battered and overwhelmed.

 

They talked about it. Sure they did. They talked about it and why it couldn't happen again, why they needed to forget that it ever did.

 

She's still in love with Murdock and he's still in love with Maria and they're not even close to giving each other their best because they can't. Because their “best” isn't for one another.

 

He told himself they had it squared away. That they'd put everything back into the little box it was meant to stay in. That he could at least pretend to himself that he didn't remember the softness of her breasts or the taste of her skin. The way she would sigh and press her forehead to that place in his shoulder when she came. The sound of his name on her lips as he came tumbling after.

 

And maybe it would have been easier if it had only happened once that night. They could have explained it away in about a hundred thousand different ways and probably a hundred thousand more that he hadn't thought of. But it didn't only happen once. Because after the first time, when his shaking stopped and he was able to breathe again, _see_ again, focus on the shadows in his room and the fact that her body was still pressed on top of his and that his cock was already stirring between them, they carried on. He flipped her over onto her back, took his time tracing the lines of her with his hands and tongue; making her squirm and sigh and eventually hoisting her legs over his shoulders and drowning in her.

 

Later he woke up to see her lying on her belly and watching him sleep. Her eyes were big and blue enough that he could even see them shining in the darkness and all he could think about was how happy he was that she stayed. His bed wasn't empty and he could still be a man and still do these things with a woman. He didn't want her to see that written on his face though: the shame, the guilt and also the joy, because by that point they were all the same anyway. So he reached for her and when she did the same for him he pushed her down, moved in behind her, one hand on the back of her neck, the other between her thighs, pulling her hips up to meet his and sliding into her in one hard stroke.

 

He doesn't remember many of the details. Mostly he remembers the sensations, the feelings. The slick wetness of her cunt and the soft smoothness of her ass against his belly; her low moans and his name again in her mouth; the way she pushed herself up on the headboard and turned her face to kiss him awkwardly as emptied all his pain and misery and love into her.

 

Her taste in the back of his throat.

 

His name in her mouth sounding like a promise.

 

Later she asked him who he is. He told her he was a dead man.

 

So they ended it before it even began. Or so they thought. But it was a lie because it _did_ begin - she wouldn't be here if it hadn’t.

 

And he can’t say no to her. So he holds the door open and lets her come inside.

 

~~~

 

He has this thing about touching her - he does it even when he shouldn’t.

 

She has a thing about it too. She lets him, and she doesn’t tell him to stop.

 

But he doesn’t do it now. Because that’s how it started the last time. His hands on her hip, checking a torn wound - one she wouldn’t have gotten if she’d just stayed the fuck away from him like he told her. Like she promised she would.

 

And there they were, his fingers on her, gentle but matter-of-fact, practical. And then not so practical. Then a slow and wholly unnecessary caress of her waist, palm flat on her belly and him trying to decide whether to move it up or down. Her skin prickling and his breathing heavy. And then his hand on her face and hers on his, moving into each other like two destructive forces coming together, spinning out of control and consuming them.

 

Her in his bed like a little flame, burning him, breaking him.

 

 _It’s not going to happen again._ He tells himself this as he watches her in the semi darkness. He means every damn word.

 

He doesn’t know why she’s here. Why she’s not wearing shoes and why she has whiskey. She’s not drunk but she looks like she walked a long way, which isn’t all that safe but she has a .38 in her purse and he knows she knows how to use it. Either way it doesn’t really matter. She can stay - you don’t kick a lady out of your apartment in the early hours of the morning even if it isn’t exactly right that she’s here in the first place. She can take the bed, he’ll sleep on the couch - it’s not like he sleeps well these days anyway - and they can discuss everything tomorrow.

 

Or not.

 

It’s a legitimate possibility she might just go home, never give him an explanation and he guesses he’s okay with that too. He can be here for her like this if that’s what she needs. He just can’t be here for her the other way. The way he was there for her once before.

 

But she seems to want to talk. She goes to his cupboards, opens them like she has a right to, pulls out two drinking glasses and pours two fingers of whiskey into each, adds the smallest splash of tap water.

 

He doesn't say anything. He watches her.

 

She takes a sip. She doesn't grimace and he didn't expect her to. He shrugs, picks up his glass and drinks too.

 

It's good. Smokey. She must have paid a fair price for it and again he wonders what's going on.

 

She takes another sip, doesn't look at him but it's not like he's being ignored. It’s more likely that she hasn't yet figured out how to engage him, how to bring him into whatever Hell is going on in her head.

 

He gets that. There's Hell in his head too. Sometimes he can even tell when the devil is home.

 

She drinks a bit more, bites her lip hard and when she eventually looks at him he sees mascara on her cheeks and her eyes shimmering in the blue shadows.

 

He has this thing about touching her. He does it. Even when he shouldn't.

 

She lets him.

 

Tentative hand on her shoulder and then down to her elbow. A slight squeeze.

 

“Ma'am?”

 

It's not intended to convey any meaning - any hidden message - but she shoots him a filthy look, shakes him off, takes a step back.

 

He guesses like it’s not right to send a lady out of your apartment in the dead of night, it also isn't right to be so formal with one you've had in your bed.

 

He can try again.

 

“Karen?”

 

She doesn't pull away this time and he moves closer, hand sliding around her arm.

 

The fact is he has no fucking clue what to do. She shouldn't be here. She _knows_ she shouldn't be here because they can't be trusted around each other. They know this. They both do.

 

They have proof.

 

Because after he fucked her that third and what he believed to be final time, they did speak. They went through every reason they could never ever do it again. It needed to be squared away and it was.

 

For about ten seconds.

 

She was lying against his pillows, naked with the sheet tucked up under her arms and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing nothing but jeans. And even as he was telling her that this couldn’t happen, that they needed to find a way to fix it, all he really wanted to do was pull that sheet off her and cover her body with his.

 

And so he did. They both did.

 

And he's not sure how long it was before they surfaced for air again, how much time he took to have her and taste her and claim her; how many times he made her come. And how he held her and hushed her softly as she did.

 

How he woke her up with kisses after.

 

There really weren't words to say what needed to be said after that. He doesn't think either of them actually knew what _could_ be said. There wasn’t any way to explain what had just happened.

 

So they didn't. She picked her clothes up off the floor - she didn't even bother to ask him to look away while she did and then she left.

 

And he hasn't felt anything close to that level of lonely since the day he's family disappeared in a hail of bullets and a wave of blood. And no, it isn’t the same. Nothing could ever be _the same_. But it is in the same ballpark. It has the same quality if not the same intensity. And he hasn't been anything approaching okay since.

 

He realises he was a fool and a liar and more than likely both when he thought they had it squared away. It’s nowhere near any working definition of “squared away”.

 

The truth is he's always known that.

 

So no, she shouldn't be here because they're bad for each other and they break rules within seconds of setting them. She shouldn't be here because somehow when she's around he loses himself a little. He forgets. The pain and the rage doesn't feel quite so present, quite so rough and harsh and jagged. She's like that rush of endorphins after a fall, after he hurts, and he can feel her coursing through his blood in much the same way.

 

He can't trust her. He can't trust himself. And what scares him more than anything is that he's not sure he wants to be able to do either.

 

But the fact is she's not thinking about that right now. Or if she is, it's fleeting and unimportant. In any case, no matter what had ever happened between them, he's pretty sure Karen Page isn't into the whole friends with benefits thing anyway. She's not here for that. Neither is he.

 

He’s about to ask her again what's going on when she cuts him off.

 

“Do you remember where you were a year ago Frank?”

 

Her voice is trembling but somehow also resigned, distant, and he takes a few second to grasp her meaning.

 

“Karen…”

 

“No,” she knocks back the rest of her drink, slams the glass down on the counter. “Where were you a year ago?”

 

He’s not going to get anything until he answers, so he frowns, tries to remember the date. It's early April now, which means a year ago his life had been in the ground for almost for close on ten months. Things tend to be fuzzy since Maria died. He doesn't know if it's the bullet in his brain that caused it or if it's just easier to not remember it all. But there's things that stand out, important stuff like killing Schoonover; Fisk and the prison riot. Then there’s other stuff: Karen Page and her pretty blue eyes and the look in them when she shoved his family in his face; Karen Page giving up on him one night in the woods. Him giving up on himself the second he slipped inside her.

 

The important things.

 

But tallying scum isn't important and he's pretty sure that's what he was doing a year ago.

 

“You don't know?” she asks and he shakes his head.

 

He could try harder but he thinks she's looking to make a point rather than demand effort on his part.

 

“Do you know where I was a year ago?” she asks.

 

He frowns. “I didn't know you a year ago.”

 

It's true and sure it was only a matter of weeks until he _would_ know her. Still though, he feels like he's being led up the garden path with this line of questioning. She’s setting a trap for him, even if she doesn’t really know she’s doing it.

 

She pours another glass of whiskey and there's part of him that's relieved she does. He might be weak around her but he's not a creep and if she's drunk there's just no way they're going to end up in his bedroom. He's wildly grateful that she’s taken that possibility off the table.

 

“Thought you were the big bad Punisher,” she says and her voice has a hard mocking edge to it that he's never heard and doesn't like. “Thought you protected the weak, those at risk.”

 

And something close to anger flares in his chest, because that's just not true. He's not a white knight. He never was.

 

He lets go of her then, takes a few steps back, downs his whiskey too.

 

“I think you're confusing me with your boyfriend.”

 

It's cruel. He knows it is. It's a low blow on so many levels and he's not surprised to see her reel a little at his words. She recovers quickly though, gives him a humourless smile and takes another gulp of whiskey.

 

“Am I Frank?”

 

He rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake Karen. Did you come here at fucking 2am to do this? Really? Come in here and pick a fight. What the hell for?”

 

There's a second she looks chastened, shamed even. And he _still_ doesn't know what the fuck is even going on. He gets that something has happened. Something has happened now and something happened a year ago. And he gets that she thinks he's the only one who'd understand and that in itself hurts her in a worse way than the actual events.

 

And that leaves him nowhere - Karen Page's dirty little secret.

 

Her dirty little secret trying to figure out her riddles in the middle of the night while whiskey fries his brain and she cracks his heart wide open.

 

“I had nowhere else to go,” she says quietly.

 

He finds it doesn't feel good being a last resort, the place she goes when all her other options are exhausted. Doesn't feel good at all. And he knows she's a loner, knows her circle is limited and she likes it that way. There's Murdock and Nelson and lately Claire Temple too, that asshole boss of hers. So it's not like there's a lot of options before him. But still, it doesn't feel good. And the fact that it bothers him is a problem all on its own.

 

He puts his glass down on the counter and she heads for the bottle but he waves her away.

 

“Karen, what's going on?” he asks.

 

Gentle now. Voice low. He's not going to fight. He can't fight her anyway. Not truly. He wishes it was different. Wishes there wasn't so much shit between them. But wishing never helped anyone much.

 

“Do you think some things are always bad?” she asks. “Do you think circumstances are really that important?”

 

He’s the wrong person for this line of questioning. She knows this. What's okay and what's not okay for him isn't beholden to the laws of the land, to a higher power. They're his code. Some might say he makes it up as he goes along.

 

But she’s looking at him now and her eyes are big and pleading and he knows she's hoping he has something to say that she wants to hear, something that will soothe this as yet unnamed pain in her gut.

 

He’s never been one for the right words. He has his truths. All he can do is give them to her.

 

“I think people like to put things in boxes. Makes the big fucking scary world easier to navigate when you can say ‘that's always good’ and ‘that's always bad’. Ain't much that works like that though. Stupid fuckers don't realise most shit is grey.”

 

He shrugs. It’s not particularly insightful and it isn't like she didn't already know this. She's not stupid but then this isn’t about education. It’s about validation. He thinks on some level _he_ has always been about validation for her.

 

She sighs, sags against his counter and puts a hand to her head. He wants to take her to his couch, get her sitting down and talking sense and not this random flailing she seems to be doing right now but he's scared to touch her.

 

More whiskey. No tap water this time and she knocks it back hard and fast.

 

“Matt doesn't think so,” she says quietly.

 

“Yeah well, Red needs to get his head out his ass once in a while.”

 

“He thinks there's things you can't come back from. Things that are always bad,” she stops, looks at him long and hard. “You think that too. That's why you punish them. Why you don't let them get back up. That's not grey Frank.”

 

She's got a point but he still doesn't think him and Murdock have much in common.

 

“So how do you decide Frank?” she asks. “You say you only hurt the people who deserve it, so how do you decide who deserves it?”

 

He’s quiet for a second while he tries to make sense out of what she’s saying. It's not helping that she was already speaking in code before she started on the whiskey. And it's late and he's tired and he doesn't know why she's even here.

 

“Karen where is this coming from?”

 

She looks away, blinks rapidly but the tears still come. He watches as they run down her cheeks - black muddy mascara tracks with a perfect crystal kaleidoscope at the end of each.

 

She puts her glass down, hangs her head and her shoulders shake. And he can't just leave it like this. He can't just let her cry and stand there like a fool watching her.

 

She's been in his bed yes, and that complicates things more than he could even imagine. But this isn't about that. This isn't about sex and bad timing and things that should be swept under the rug. This is about her and the fact that she's hurting and that once upon a time, before he put his head between her legs and tasted her, she was just about the only friend he had. And she needs him.

 

So he walks around the counter and as he does, she starts crying, long loud hiccupping sobs that break him wide open. And it's not even a question. Not even a debate.

 

He puts his hands on her shoulders and pulls her close. He lets her bury her head in his neck, and he wraps his arms around her and waits while she shakes against him, her tears soaking his T-shirt and the smell of her hair filling him up.

 

He has this thing about touching her. He does it. He shouldn't do it. She lets him. Even when she shouldn't either.

 

And he's touching her now. Slow and gentle. Hand rubbing her back, the other cupping her head. And then her arms are tight around him too, nails digging into his back like claws, face pressed into him like she wants to climb inside him, crack open his ribs one by one, piece by fucking piece, until he's nothing but a gaping hole.

 

A bloody mess shaped just like Karen Page.

 

He finds he's okay with that. He doesn't need to be anything else. There are worse things in life than being meticulously pulled apart by a woman like her.

 

He's not sure how long they stay like that. It feels like a long time and he closes his eyes and leans his head against hers, hushing her softly and with no real intention of being remotely successful at it. It's not about stopping her anyway. It never was. Not even when she walked out his door the last time and he didn't think she'd ever come back.

 

But eventually her tears do ebb, a slow-moving wave of misery that seems to drain her from her core and spill out down his shirt, soak in through his pores. He doesn't mind that either. He can take it for her. Save her from this. It's not much but he can do it.

 

She doesn't move when she starts talking. She's still pressed up against him and her voice is low and yet somehow clear and cutting.

 

“You're supposed to punish the people who deserve it right? You're supposed to put them down. Stop them doing it again?” she pauses. “So where were you a year ago?”

 

She messes him up. She messes him up so bad but it really doesn't matter. Not right now anyway.

 

“Karen did someone hurt you?”

 

The words leave a bitter taste in his mouth but the thought has been lying dormant in his head since she walked in and now it pushes itself to the forefront of his mind, forces him to voice it. And before she even answers he's making plans. Plans to torture, plans to maim. Plans to punish. Because what good is he if people can hurt Karen Page and he stands there like a sack of shit and lets it happen? If someone hurt her he can fix it. That's what he does. And maybe he can't fix her but this is a start. It's something. And maybe something is better than nothing.

 

But she’s shaking her head again and he doesn't fucking understand. And he really wants to. He really does.

 

He tries again. “Do you need protection?”

 

And that's when she pulls away, hard and fast like she can't bear to be touched by him, like the thought itself is horrifying to her.

 

“You don't get it,” she pauses and the tears are there again and her shoulders are shaking and she can barely say the words.

 

“Karen…”

 

“Not protection Frank.” She closes her eyes, chest heaving. “Punishment.”

 

And it feels like the world breaks itself in half and Karen Page breaks with it.

 

~~~

 

She sits on his couch, picking at a throw that he only bought a few weeks back which has already started pilling. It went from soft and smooth to hard and coarse in just a few days and he knows why he left this shit up to Maria. She always had an eye for stuff like this, could tell instantly if a shirt was going to wear out or if a pair of jeans would tear after the first wash. He misses her. He misses her so goddamn much.

 

But he's not thinking about Maria now.

 

He’s not really thinking about anything further than getting through the next couple of minutes. Understanding what it is that Karen’s trying so hard to tell him; what she thinks his role in all this needs to be.

 

She says she wants punishment, she wants his brand of justice meted out on her. She says she deserves it. He agrees with precisely none of these things and she knows that too.

 

He’d never hurt her. Never in a million years. The thought of it makes him feel sick to his stomach. To the marrow of his bones. It goes against everything he believes even if he doesn’t believe much. It’s one of those rare black and white cases where if you hurt Karen Page, you’re just wrong, no questions asked.

 

And then he looks at her across the room, the elegant line of her neck, the curve of her breast - how he knows that her nipples are pale and pink and that the space between her legs tastes sweet and hot - and he wonders if he hasn’t already done it. If what they did to each other all those nights ago isn’t already punishment enough, if it’s a torture that will never end until they’re truly done with each other. Once and for all.

 

He doesn’t want to be done with her.

 

He can barely admit but he doesn’t.

 

So he goes to her. Holds out a glass of water, tells her to drink it. And she does. No fights, no backtalk. She just does it. Long sips between gulping sobs, tears still spilling out of her eyes and streaking her cheeks, turning them dirty and grey.

 

He asks if she’s hungry and she shakes her head. He wonders if he should insist, argue a little, give her something to soak up that whiskey but he thinks that might be a bigger fight than either of them are willing to have right now. The water will have to be enough.

 

And then he just stands there, feeling like a fool, an idiot in his own damn apartment, bare feet on the cold floor and legs like blocks of stone.

 

He has no idea what to do. None. He has no idea how to reopen this conversation - whether he even _should_ reopen it.

 

But he has to. He knows he does. She can’t just walk in here, pick a fight and then demand some vague retribution for something he doesn’t fully comprehend and wouldn’t care about if he did. He can’t just leave her hurting from this either and he almost wants to laugh at how completely fucking insane it is that he - the fucking big bad Punisher - wants to take the pain away. That suddenly it feels like his job is healing instead of hurting, protecting instead of punishing.

 

So he goes to her, sits down next to her and moves in close so he can put an arm around her shoulders, tug her hands away from her face.

 

He has this thing about touching her. He does it. Even when he shouldn’t.

 

He doesn’t care. He’s not so sure that right now he shouldn’t.

 

Hand rubbing her shoulder, the other holding both of hers.

 

“Come on,” he says softly. “Come on, enough now.”

 

It’s been a long time since he’s done anything like this and he suspects he’s not very good at it. He didn’t have moments like this with Maria, not really. She didn’t have baggage like this. Sure, she got emotional - they both did - and sure, he was there for her, but she didn't carry a darkness within her that she had to fight every day to stop from consuming her. But then Karen isn’t Maria and he’s not the Frank Castle he used to be. There’s no real point in trying to draw comparisons.

 

Eventually she stops shaking and again the tears stop falling. But he doesn’t stop touching her, doesn’t let go of her hands.

 

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” he says softly. “No bullshit. Just tell me what happened.”

 

She swallows heavily, takes another sip of water, and puts the glass down on the coffee table and pulls a hand out of his to run through her hair, tuck it behind her ear.

 

He remembers how she did that while she moved on top of him. And a second later she arched against him and it came loose almost immediately and ended up in his mouth. He didn't care. He'd never felt anything as good as her body against his in his life.

 

But now isn't the time. There isn't room in the world, let alone this tiny apartment for thoughts like that, for images like that. And yet somehow there was room enough for it to happen in the first place. And he doesn't know how they could have been so stupid, so reckless, so irresponsible.

 

So wonderful. So bone-splittingly perfect.

 

God she messes with his head. She always has. She's always found ways to turn his world upside down, grind it into the dust, fuck him up and make him want to say thank you for it.

 

And then she looks at him with those watery eyes, smudged make up and he doesn't need to be a mind reader to know what she’s thinking, that she's wondering if there's a way to get out of this. If she can just get up and leave or if she can kiss him and distract him. Open up a hole in the ground and disappear into it.

 

But she does none of those things and he rubs her shoulder again, lets her lean against him.

 

“I ain't gonna judge you,” he says softly.

 

“That's what Matt said.”

 

Her voice has some of that hardness back but he doesn't take it to heart.

 

“But I don't lie to you,” he says and as he does a sob erupts from the back of her throat and there's nothing he can do but wait it out again, tug her a little closer and whisper her name.

 

He starts to wonder if he's actually going to get anything out of her at all or if they need to postpone this conversation until she can actually say and hear things without falling apart. But then she speaks and her voice is strained and low and halting.

 

She tells him that a year ago she was picked up by one of Fisk’s henchmen. She stuck her nose in where it didn't belong, her and that Ben guy that she’s mentioned once or twice. Ben paid with his life but she… well, she got lucky.

 

She snorts at that. Tells him luck is a funny thing. That it doesn't make any fucking sense when you think about it. Because you say you're lucky when you find a ten dollar bill in your pocket you didn't know you had or you get the last ticket to a movie. But you're also lucky when you escape a burning building or you slip but someone catches you before you fall. But you are patently not lucky in all of these instances. Because if you were you wouldn't be needing ten dollar bills and your home wouldn’t be on fire.

 

You wouldn’t be slipping and needing someone to catch you.

 

She's babbling but he lets her. Lets her take her time and circle the meat of it, leap in like a shark or a wild dog every now and then and take a bite just to see how it feels before backing off again.

 

He’s never seen Karen Page this wary before, not even when he showed up at her apartment and she pulled a gun on him, not even when he undressed her and took her into his bed.

 

But she perseveres, edging closer and closer to the truth all the time, stopping every few seconds to look at him, to check in, see if there’s any judgment in his eyes, if she can still trust him. And somehow she does. Somehow, despite everything that’s happened between them, she does.

 

She tells him everything.

 

None if it is really a surprise. He thinks he grasped the bare bones of it before. The outlines. It wasn’t hard to see she had secrets, deep dark secrets. He thinks he probably saw it the first time she walked into his hospital room, got tired of his bullshit and shoved his family in his face.

 

There’s always been something about Karen Page. There’s always been something that sits a little too close for comfort, a little too real.

 

So no, it’s not a new story. It’s vaguely placed where he thought it would be.

 

There was a man, he threatened her, he threatened her friends. And then to top it all off he underestimated her and left a fucking gun lying on the table in front of her and pretty much dared her to use it.

 

So she did. She really did.

 

Another glance at him to check he’s still with her. That he gets it. That he understands and that he wasn’t lying when he said he wouldn’t judge.

 

And he nods, rubs her shoulder again, and she takes that as a signal to continue.

 

She shot him seven times she thinks. Seven. Can he believe that? What on earth told her it was necessary to shoot him seven times? What kind of a person does that?

 

“The kind that doesn’t want him to get back up again,” he tells her. “The kind that finishes the goddamn job.”

 

She doesn’t say anything to that, looks away again, wipes a hand across her eyes.

 

“I threw the gun into the river,” she says. “Then I went home and tried to forget it ever happened.”

 

“Not so easy is it?”

 

She shakes her head and that damn piece of her hair comes loose again. She ignores it though and he tries very hard to do the same.

 

“He would have killed me,” she says. “Maybe not then, but eventually he would have. And in the meantime while I was trying to buy myself a few extra days or weeks, I would have sold Matt and Foggy out. Got them killed too. Like I had a right to value my life over theirs.”

 

Her voice is steadier than before, a kind of horrible resignation that seems to tap into that well of confidence he knows she has but doesn’t see all too often.

 

“I couldn’t do that.” she says. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not that. I’m not worth that.”

 

He disagrees, but he doesn’t say anything and he also realises his bias. There’s not much that he considers worth more than Karen Page, not much he wouldn’t sacrifice for her even if that’s a whole other mess of emotions and heartbreak he’s not willing to get into right now. But he gets it. He understands where she’s coming from.

 

“I’m not saying it’s an excuse for what I did. It’s just the truth.”

 

Another sigh and even though he has a lot to say to that, he stays quiet. She’s not finished. She needs someone to hear this, someone to confess to, grant her absolution. He’s her priest and she’s his sinner and he never in his life thought this possible.

 

“The worst part was I’d do it again.” She stops, looks up at him and even though her eyes are bloodshot and watery and she’s still swallowing her own sobs, he sees God’s honest truth on her face. She _would_ do it again. There’s absolutely no question.

 

“It wasn’t even like I fought with myself over it. I saw him. I saw the gun and I knew what I had to do. Everything just came together and I knew there was no other way.”

 

“Moment of clarity,” he says softly and she nods.

 

“It was like it was meant to happen like that.”

 

He takes her hands again, stops her twisting her fingers around each other.

 

“You made a choice,” he says. “You did. There ain’t nothin’ and nobody in this world who can say you didn’t. But your choice wasn’t whether to kill a man or not. It was a choice to carry on living. You wanted to and there was only one way to do it. He forced you to choose yourself or him. You chose yourself and their ain’t no shame in that. And Murdock can go fuck himself if he feels differently.”

 

She looks away then, lets her hair fall forward like a veil and he can almost see the sobs building up inside her again, feel her shoulders shake under his arm.

 

And he realises he’s never been so grateful for the gross arrogance of white collar criminals in his entire life. It’s not hard to see why people underestimate Karen Page. It really isn’t. She’s pretty and she’s nervous and to look at her you wouldn’t think there’s a mean bone in her body.

 

And it isn’t like he didn’t notice that, isn’t like he didn’t notice her blue eyes or the smell of her perfume. For fuck’s sake, he’s had her in his bed, he’s been inside her body. And yet… and yet he doesn’t think he’s ever doubted her. Maybe her loyalty to him over say Murdock or Nelson but that’s par for the course. He’s never doubted that core of steel inside her. Never doubted she has it in her to do what needs to be done. All that’s really changed is he has confirmation now.

 

She takes a shuddering breath, pulls a hand out of his and pinches the bridge of her nose and it feels like they’re entering the next part of the conversation. Round two. The reason she’s actually here tonight. The one he’d bet every last thing he ever held dear has something to do with Red.

 

And it does. That’s not a surprise either. And the story also goes exactly as he thought it would. She wanted to come clean. She wanted absolution. She wanted the easy way out. Someone to tell her to say a few hail Mary’s and cleanse her soul. She went to Murdock. She went to him because he’s good and pure and he has a code. She went to him because he’s her friend - one of the select few - and she thinks maybe she could love him. And maybe he could love her back. _And if you can’t trust the person you love with this, with these kind of deep dark secrets, is it even real love?_

 

She shifts next to him, presses against his arm. Doesn’t wait for an answer.

 

“He doesn’t know what I did,” she says. “I never told him. I wanted to, but I didn’t.”

 

He nods. “You tried to feel him out first?”

 

“Yeah. I asked him about what he does. About the people he fights, the code he has. I asked him if he would ever consider it if his life was threatened or someone he cared for…” she trails off. “He said no.”

 

And he can’t help it. He snorts. Red is a lot of things, a lot of good things, but he is also full of shit and he doesn’t think that will ever change.

 

She glances at him, raises an eyebrow and he briefly considers telling her about the night Red agreed to help him kill The Blacksmith. How he was determined that it would be okay if it was just this once, if he only jumped over to Frank’s side of the world momentarily and then went back again after. But he doesn't say anything. It’s not fair and it’ll only make her feel even worse. And he doesn’t want to admit it but there’s something else too. Something that he doesn’t fully understand but he can’t help but feel like it would be meddling. And when he thinks about it in those terms it opens up a whole other aspect to this that he really doesn’t want to have to deal with right now.

 

So he shakes his head, tells her to carry on and she looks at him suspiciously for a good few seconds before she does.

 

“He says there’s some things you don’t come back from,” her voice is low but steady. “That you can’t atone for. He talks like he's got it all figured out… He looks at me like I’m all good. That there’s nothing about me that could ever even be questionable.”

 

She puts her head in her hands, sighs deeply. “It’s like he doesn’t know who I am… It’s like he doesn’t want to know…”

 

He wasn’t expecting that. He knew it and he knew she knew it. But he’s surprised she said it out loud. To him. To him of all people.

 

He guesses when she says they don’t lie to one another she really means it. She really takes that as far as she can.

 

In many ways that makes him feel even worse because he’s lying to her now. He’s lying just by being here and not telling her how he feels. What he feels. But he’s lying to himself too and maybe he needs to get right in his own skin before he can in hers.

 

But not now. It isn’t the time.

 

And he doesn’t know what to do. He really fucking doesn’t. Because it’s not his place to insinuate himself in their relationship. And he doesn’t trust himself to do the right thing anyway. Doesn’t trust any wisdom he might have to give to her to be unbiased. She’s here after all. She’s here and she’s crying and no goddamn man on Earth is worth that.

 

Even him.

 

 _Especially_ him.

 

So he rubs her shoulder and lets her lean against him and he thinks of all the things he’d say to Murdock about letting the best goddamn thing that ever happened to him slip through his fingers. Thinks of how he’d tell him to wake the fuck up, take what’s in front of him because he isn’t ever gonna get anything better. Because better doesn’t exist.

 

And Jesus fucking Christ that stings. That stings so much because he’s not even thinking about Murdock anymore.

 

“He thinks I’m like him…” she sounds so weary. “Good. Decent.”

 

He can’t. He can’t let her carry on like this.

 

“You are good. You are decent.”

 

No lies. Never lies.

 

She snorts, shakes her head.

 

“He says some people can kill people. He makes it sound like a character flaw…”

 

“That’s bullshit.”

 

She stops, looks up at him and he almost lifts his hand to her cheek, almost wipes her tears with his thumb, almost puts his lips on her to swallow them. To drown in them.

 

But he doesn't. He can't.

 

Not this. Not again.

 

He swallows heavily, gathers himself together, forces his brain and his mouth to start working.

 

“Karen, do you think if you told Murdock that one of Fisk’s cronies kidnapped you and tied you to a fucking chair and told you he was going to hurt you and all the people you cared about that he would judge you? Do you think Murdock really wouldn’t see the difference?”

 

She considers this for a second, pursing her lips and glancing around the room.

 

“Maybe,” she says. “But does it really matter?”

 

“Yeah I think it fuckin’ matters,” he tries not to sound harsh, he really does, but his voice comes out low and mean.

 

She ignores it. He guesses they’ve been around each other for long enough that she knows when his rage means something and when it doesn’t, when to kick his ass for it and when to let it slide.

 

“I’m not what he really wants Frank. He thinks I am. But I’m not.”

 

“Then maybe you need to stop trying to be what he wants. Maybe you can be who you are and if he doesn’t like it then fuck him.”

 

She smiles wanly. “You make it sound so easy.”

 

“It is easy.”

 

She gives him a dark look, the wannest of wan smiles which tells him she thinks he’s indulging her and suddenly he’s irrationally angry and he’s not sure why or with whom.

 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says. “A girl like you doesn’t need to settle. Not for a fucking second.”

 

He takes her hands again, shifts on the couch to look at her properly, meet her eyes dead on and show her that he’s not holding back, that there are no lies and no half-truths and he means every goddamn fucking word.

 

“You have everything Karen. You do. There isn’t one reason in the whole world why you need to pretend you don’t. You don't owe anyone shit. You don’t need to feel bad about looking out for yourself and putting some mobster piece of crap down. I ain’t even gonna say you’re worth ten of him because the two of you don’t even exist in the same fucking reality. You’re you and this James Wesley was a piece of shit.”

 

He takes a breath, looks down at the floor for a second, at his bare feet. At hers. There are holes in her stockings, the nylon laddered seemingly from the ground upwards.

 

“If Murdock can’t handle that, if he doesn’t _know_ that, then maybe Murdock ain’t worth shit.”

 

She flinches at that, like his words are too hard, too sour. And maybe they are.

 

He sighs again, lets go of her and leans back on the couch. He doesn’t care about Murdock’s code. Maybe once he would have admired it, maybe once he would have understood the righteousness, appreciated the clear lines Murdock likes to draw around the things. But not now, not anymore. Not after Maria and Lisa and Frank Jr. Not after Schoonover and not after what Karen Page just told him.

 

He touches her back and he knows he shouldn’t, but it doesn’t stop him.

 

“Karen, you did the right thing. You did the only thing you could have done.”

 

“Why does it feel so bad then?” she asks. “If I didn’t have another choice why does it feel like I should have found one?”

 

“Because killing a man shouldn’t be easy,” he says. “When it gets easy, you may as well be dead yourself.”

 

“Is it easy for you?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She holds his gaze for a few seconds and then shakes her head firmly and all he really wants to do is touch her pretty blonde hair, run his fingers down the curl of it, feel it fall through his hands like silk.

 

“You’re not dead,” she says. “I know you’re not dead.”

 

It’s the closest either of them have come to addressing that night, and he feels like she’s put them on a knife edge, that one wrong move could send him falling into the unknown.

 

Except it’s not unknown. It’s her.

 

“Karen…”

 

“Forget it,” she says. “I didn’t mean…”

 

But she did “mean” and so did he. And so did they. And they shouldn’t even be acknowledging this. They shouldn’t even admit it was a thing and it happened. And they both know it.

 

He can do two things. He can let it slide or he can rip it all out into the open. Have a proper talk about it, hope it works better than the last time. He’s not sure he wants to take the risk, he’s not sure he doesn't want to either.

 

Because she's right. He isn't dead. At least not when he's around her, not when he's with her and touching her and holding her.

 

Not when he's fucking her.

 

He looks at her. Her tear streaked face, her blue eyes that shine like summer, the long loose hair he once wrapped around his fist so he could kiss her hard and keep her close and safe…

 

He was alive and when she left he felt like he was dying all over again.

 

He can't… he _won't_ risk it.

 

He takes the coward’s option.

 

“You need to forgive yourself. It ain't easy and spending time with Red ain't gonna help. But you did the right thing,” he shouldn’t but he takes her hand again, squeezes her fingers and she squeezes back. “If you never believe another fucking word I say to you, believe that.”

 

She stares at him for a long time and he knows it has nothing to do with trusting that he believes what he's saying and everything to do with figuring out if she should put her faith in someone like him.

 

And then she reaches up and touches his face and it's all he can do not to turn his head and nuzzle her palm.

 

She's gentle. She always is with him. No matter how difficult he is, no matter how he fights her, no matter how many times he tells her to leave, she's always kind to him, treating him like a frightened stray dog that just needs a safe place and someone to love him.

 

Her thumb sweeps across his cheekbone and he remembers how she did this when she was splayed under him and he was inside her and trying to control the violence and rage inside himself. How he wanted to use her and how he desperately didn’t want that at all.

 

She was so good to him. So, so good to him.

She leans in and he knows if she puts her mouth on his now he's lost. But she doesn't. She kisses his cheek, lingers a second longer than she needs to and thanks him with a whisper.

 

Later he takes the couch, gives her the bed, and the next morning she's gone and the half empty bottle of whiskey on his counter is the only sign she was there at all.

  


~~~

_He saves her life._

 

_When her arms are aching and that goddamn dress is so tight around her legs she feels like it's going to squeeze the life out of her before the river can drown her, he comes for her._

 

_She shouldn't know it's him. She can barely see through the dark water and the black sky. She can't feel much of anything anymore and her mind has started playing tricks on her. Taking her away to places that are warm and safe. Places that she's tried so hard to forget about over the past year._

 

_And she's sinking. She sees herself against the backdrop of the blue black water. Her arms are outstretched and her hair floats above her head like mist. She can't breathe but she's stopped trying, instead greedily gulping the Hudson into her lungs._

 

Let it be over. Let it be over soon.

 

_She didn't get to say goodbye. She left things mean and sour between them. So many regrets._

 

_He saves her life._

 

_She shouldn't know it's him._

 

_But when his arms close around her middle and she feels his legs kicking hard and strong behind her, she has no doubt that it is._

 

_Only one man feels like this._

 

_Only one man makes her feel like this. Warm. Safe._

 

_And then suddenly there's light and there's air and he's holding her tight and pulling them both towards the river bank._

 

 _Holding her tight and never ever letting go_.

 


	2. Drowning in the sea of tears you're crying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone who reviewed and left kudos for the previous chapter. I appreciate every single one.
> 
> Here's chapter two, there's not really much to say other than I hope you like it.

_He saves her life._

 

 _Later he tells her that he breathed air into her lungs and he pumped his hands hard on her heart. He cried and he cursed and then when he'd done all that and she was still lying limp and lifeless in his arms, he begged her to come back to him. He begged. Because he_ couldn't _do it again._

 

_She couldn't make him._

 

_She had no right to even try._

 

_No fucking right._

 

_That's what makes the difference in the end. His voice calling her back, calling her home._

 

_Pleading._

 

_Of everything it's what she remembers most clearly._

 

_He asks and she answers. She has to. She doesn't have a choice and that's okay._

 

_She crashes back into the world on a wave of disgusting black water that splutters out of her lungs and her mouth, and onto the half concrete, half sand of the river bank._

 

_She chokes as it fills her up again and he rolls her onto her side, holds her steady as she vomits the death out of her throat._

 

_She coughs, sucking air into her lungs in large gulps, a terrible tearing sound as it rattles into her throat and bubbles out of her again._

 

_But he's got her._

 

 _He's_ got _her and that's all that matters._

 

_He's smacking her hard between her shoulder blades and he's saying something, which she's sure is important but she can't quite parse._

 

You're not dead. You're not dead. You can't be because I'm still here and I can't do that without you.

 

_Across the river there's another explosion and the yacht tilts sideways and she can see people hanging off the railings, their shining eveningwear sparkling in the firelight._

_She wonders why they don't let go, what has them clinging so desperately to the boat. It's a death trap. Life is on the other side of the water._

 

_It's just the blink of an eye._

 

_She knows. She’s been there. The yacht. The water. Matt somewhere in between._

 

_Matt._

 

Oh god. Matt.

 

_She tries to say his name, listens to it sound like nothing more than gurgling as it croaks out of her mouth._

 

_“Shhh shhh shhh shhh,” Frank is saying softly. “You're okay. I've got you.”_

 

_He does. He always has. Part of her knows he always will._

 

_Forever and always._

 

_She was naive to think it could ever be another way with them._

 

_But it's not her she's worried about right now._

 

_She manages to retch out Matt’s name. Between coughing and choking and not dying she says it, gets it out into the world._

 

_There's a moment where she thinks she sees both fear and resignation in Frank’s eyes._

 

_And then something else._

 

_Something she’ll later understand was loyalty. Devotion._

 

_She has no fucking right._

 

_And yet… and yet she does._

 

_He stands and the sand leaves a pattern that looks like the Milky Way on his jeans, all stars and planets and fiery suns, gentle silver moons._

 

_Suddenly his coat is around her shoulders and it’s warm and dry and she realises he must have left it here before he jumped into the river and saved her. He must have thought that far ahead._

 

_He tells her to stay. He tells her to stay just like she is. Not to move. Not to stand. To stay and cough that terrible thing that tried to take her away from him out of her. He will not let it and she can't either._

 

You stay.

 

_He doesn't say “please”._

 

_He's not begging now._

 

_And then he's gone. Back in the water, heading back towards that goddamn yacht that's throwing fiery parts of itself into the river, that's sending up plumes of red flame like fireworks against Hell’s Kitchen and it's sombre February sky._

 

_She stays._

 

~~~

 

He sees Murdock walk her home and it's almost enough to make him turn around.

 

Almost.

 

Not quite.

 

It's testament to how fucked up he's feeling that he doesn't. Because he should.

 

He _knows_ he fucking should.

 

Instead he waits. Waits until Murdock says goodnight; sees the way he's standing, lingering, hoping for an invitation inside.

 

Frank almost hopes he gets it. Almost hopes she does what she did the last time he saw her and makes the decision for him.

 

But she's not cooperating tonight. Not with him and certainly not with Murdock. Or maybe she is. He's finding it hard to tell the difference.

 

Either way he feels like a creep waiting there for Murdock to be on his merry way, waiting for her door to close and her light to go out. Waiting for Murdock to put a hand to the wall, bow his head for a moment before sighing and moving off, heading down the street with the confidence and grace of a man with 20/20 vision.

 

He guesses she hasn't quite gotten over everything she told him, hasn't quite lost herself to her sins yet. Or maybe she has.

 

He tells himself he doesn't care either way.

 

He lies. He lies a lot.

 

It's okay though. He gets a pass. Hell’s Kitchen is also uneasy tonight, a not-so-gentle anxiety roiling just under the surface, rippling slowly and surely into the streets. It's been that way for a while now. People losing faith in their leaders, losing faith in themselves.

 

He knows all about that.

 

When he knocks on her door and she answers it with an exasperated look and an “I told you Matt…” he doesn't know if he's wildly grateful or wildly jealous.

 

And when she sees it's him and her face softens despite her frown and he thinks there’s something like relief in her eyes, he doesn't know whether to turn around and walk away or break down at her feet.

 

He doesn't do either.

 

For a moment he just looks at her. He just looks and remembers. Remembers how she can turn him inside out and upside down, remembers how fucked up it is that he's here... that _she's_ here.

 

His wife is in the ground - the goddamn ground - and he found it in himself to fuck somebody else, to give himself away … to betray everything that he was and still come back here.

 

Still be weak enough to want this.

 

She's talking. She wants to know if something is wrong. She’s actually asking him that without a hint of irony. She’s standing there on her doorstep with her high heels and her pretty hair - those goddamn eyes that murder him when he looks at her - and putting that out into the world like it’s a normal question that has a normal answer.

 

And he wants to scream at her that yes, yes, something is fucking wrong. Something is _very_ fucking wrong in a way that goes beyond the boundaries of the word “wrong”. His wife is dead. She’s buried. She’s gone forever. The love of his life snuffed out like a goddamned candle at Christmas dinner. Not even given the time to flicker and gutter. Just gone. Shining brightly and then nothing. His children too. They didn’t even get the chance to burn. They were sweet and innocent and he couldn’t do his fucking job and they died.

 

Because of him.

 

_And isn’t that a fucking joke ma'am?_

 

Isn’t it just fucking hilarious that he can go to war and protect an entire goddamn country, a nation, the fucking Western world but when it comes down to it - when it really _matters_ \- he can’t do a goddamn thing.

 

 _Is that enough_ wrong _for you ma’am? Is it?_

 

Is it enough shit that just hasn’t gone according to plan to qualify for some level of wrongness? Enough to stop him feeling like he should just pick himself up and dust himself off and start all over again? Does he get a pass? Can he rest? Can he cry and just for a second give into the fact that his world has ended and there’ll be no more goodness in it?

 

Is that _allowed_?

 

But then she’s reaching for him, strong fingers closing around his wrist and she’s tugging him towards her. And her touch is gentle and so are her eyes. Those goddamn pretty blue eyes that fuck him up and fuck him down and fuck him out of his head.

 

He should say no to her. He can’t. He lets her make the decision for him again.

 

He follows her inside.

 

~~~

 

It occurs to him he hasn’t brought gifts. Not like she did. Not like the whiskey she left on the counter, nor the night of euphoria she bought the time before. He’s come empty-handed. And that’s okay. He intends to go much the same way. There's nothing much she could want from him anyway.

 

She has a stocked booze cabinet in the corner but she doesn’t even look at it as she heads to the kitchen, leaves him standing there in her space feeling like this is the one place he doesn’t belong and the only place he wants to be. He waits, hears the metallic buzzing of a coffee machine, the sound of cups on banging on a counter.

 

This is so fucked up. This is _so fucking fucked up._

 

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here with her. The woman he’s taken into his bed knowing full well he doesn’t love her like he should; knowing the same could have been said of her and her feelings for him. Knowing that there’s something there - because yes, he’s an ass but he’s not a fool - but that whatever it is isn’t “good”. Not even by the loosest definition of the word. It’s destructive and angry. It’s a goddamned disaster.

 

And yet… and yet that night wasn’t angry at all. It wasn’t destructive. She was soft and sweet and gentle and he thinks in his own way he was too. He wanted to be. He wanted to be kind and tender and he thinks he was. And he still thinks about it. It's vivid and, he can barely admit it to himself, but it feels far more real than anything he can remember from his life before.

 

He wonders if that makes him a bad person, a piece of shit. He's pretty sure it does. Pretty sure it makes him a shitty husband … an even worse father.

 

_So yeah, Karen Page with your too high heels and your goddamn eyes that look like the fucking Mediterranean on a sunny day, does that fit your definition of “wrong”? Does it cover it or should he be looking into the “fucked up” category?_

 

He nearly asks. He nearly does. He nearly goes into the kitchen and vomits everything he’s thinking over her floor, over her. He nearly brings up that night, nearly tells her that she loosened an avalanche inside him and she had no right.

 

_She had no fucking right._

 

And he didn't either.

 

He doesn't say anything though. He stands there like a goddamn loser staring at her space, taking in everything there is to see:  the neat desk with her laptop bag on top of it; the three-seater couch and the armchair which doesn’t really go but actually does;  the bookshelf and how it pleases him that, at first glance, he can't see anything pretentious or artsy on it.

 

He spots some photos on it too and he can't help it but he goes to look.

 

There aren't many but what's there says enough, gives him a little snapshot into her life - what it is now, what it wasn't before. Her and Murdock, her and Nelson; the three of them together pulling faces. One of her and Claire Temple and another of her and some people he mostly doesn't recognise except for her asshole boss.

 

It's not a full life but it's a life.

 

And he's conspicuous by his absence.

 

It makes him remember he has one photo of his family. One. A single reminder shoved in his face by Karen Page when he was being an ass and she was 110% done with his bullshit.

 

It's not right.

 

It's also not anywhere near a definition of wrong.

 

“Here,” she startles him and he wonders just how fucked up he is that he didn't hear her coming. Not the click of her heels, the slight change in the air. Nothing.

 

If she wanted him dead he would be.

 

But she doesn't want that. She might be the only person left on earth who cares enough not to.

 

He turns and she's behind him, holding two mugs of coffee and looking at him like there's a chance she can fix this. Fix him.

 

She can't. He knows she can't but she's so pretty and she's so good and despite himself he just wants to hold her, cry into her hair and let her take the pain away for as long as her magic allows.

 

But he doesn't get to have that. He doesn't get to have her.

 

Not again.

 

“I shouldn't be here,” he says.

 

“Let's not do that,” she says. “You're here. It doesn't matter whether you should or shouldn't be. No one's keeping score.”

 

And he wants to ask her if that's true. If no one really is keeping a running tally of the things they do or don't do to each other.

 

How they'd even measure that.

 

He's had his head between her legs and she's had her wet fingers wrapped around his cock and his come streaking her thighs. Does that make them even? Or is he in the red? Is she?

 

He wants to ask her these things but he can't. He doesn't know how to use the words he has, doesn’t know how to make them make sense. He guesses that’s appropriate, guesses it’s the only way it could be. He’s never had any sense when he’s around her anyway.

 

No reason to start now.

 

She sighs, puts the coffee on the table.

 

“You wanna tell me why you’re here?” Her voice is gentle, soft, nowhere near what it was the last time he saw her. And somehow that makes him feel worse.

 

“Karen…”

 

“No it's okay. You can tell me.”

 

And God, he doesn't know where to begin. In his head it's garbled and incoherent, the threads of it knotting together and then fraying just when he thinks he can understand it. There's no way he can change it into words. There's too much of it to even try.

 

_I’m here because I can’t be with the person I love, so I guess you’re a decent second choice. I’m here because the love of my life isn’t, because I need a confessor and you’re my best bet. I’m here because you are. Because you owe me. Because I listened to you. I sat up all goddamn night watching you cry about some asshole who can’t bring himself to see you for the gift you are. And then you fucking left. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s just what we do to one another. But it’s my turn now. It’s my fucking turn. Because for this you are in the fucking red Karen Page. Not me. You._

 

He doesn’t say any of these things to her.

 

He doesn’t need to.

 

Because she has no right. None. And neither does he.

 

But then she’s taking his hands. It’s not a gentle clasp. Rather she’s twining their fingers together until he can’t see where hers start and his end, where they meld together to all become his and all become hers, and he wouldn’t give that feeling back for the whole world.

 

“It was today, wasn’t it?” she says and her voice is halting and low, like it’s a secret she shouldn’t be sharing, like it’s not hers to talk about and if she keeps her voice quiet it’ll hurt less.

 

But It never hurts less. She’s a smart girl. She’ll know that too.

 

He swallows, nods. Can’t look at her. _Won’t_ look at her.

 

She’s right. It was today.

 

Truthfully it’s everyday because he lives with it like it is. But still, today is the nexus, the starting point. The origin story. Maria, Lisa, Junior. All taken from him in the blink of an eye.

 

He doesn’t know why he’s scared to show her this weakness. He’s shown her all his others. She knows.

 

“I shouldn't be here,” he says again.

 

“Yes you should.”

 

He wants to tell her that even though he doesn't have anywhere else to go she was his first choice anyway. Not like her, not like the last time he saw her and she was out of options.

 

He doesn't know how to tell her that either.

 

So he doesn't.

 

He asks something else. Something he shouldn't. And it blindsides him as much as her.

 

“Where were you a year ago?”

 

She goes still and when she glances at him he's not sure what he sees. Hurt, betrayal, understanding. All three. Maybe none at all.

 

“I don't know Frank.”

 

“How about two years ago? You remember that?”

 

She looks at him, looks him right in the eye and her fingers tighten on his.

 

“I don't think where I was then is the important question.”

 

“Don't you? Because it's important to me.”

 

“I'm here now.”

 

And she's so good at this. She's _so_ fucking good at it. At focusing him and bringing him back. So much better than he’ll ever be.

 

And it's true too. She is here now and that's all that matters.

 

“Come,” she says and pulls him down to the couch.

 

He doesn’t want to go. It feels too much like last time. It feels too much like they're swapping roles and he doesn't know if he can deal with that. Doesn't even know where to start.

 

And the worst part is there's no malice in her. There's no anger. She doesn't tell him off. She doesn't judge him either. And he wishes she would. He wishes she'd do the same to him, deliver some brand of tough love and break him. He knows she's capable. He's seen it. Had it done to him. Somewhere he remembers that it's a good feeling being torn apart by Karen Page. There's something safe and kind and slightly masochistic in the way she can wield her anger like a blade.

 

But not now.

 

Now she holds his hands tightly and he's not imagining the small circles her thumbs are rubbing into his skin, nor the way her thigh rests against his.

 

He's also not imagining the way her pupils dilate and the sheen of spit and lip gloss on her mouth.

 

She might not even know. She probably doesn't. But he does.

 

He does.

 

It fucking destroys him inside. It makes him want to scream and shout, curse himself for being a piece of shit, curse her for letting him. Damn them both for all those terrible wonderful things they did in his bed.

 

He shouldn't be here.

 

He’d do anything to stay.

 

“Tell me,” she says. “Tell me what you did last year.”

 

She has no right. She has no right to ask. And yet she does. She asks. Storms ahead like she can, like she wants him to _feel_ it.

 

And he does.

 

He never stops. He's never had the pleasure of not feeling it except for that one night, those hours she gave him and took everything he was in return.

 

He hates her for that. He thinks he might love her too.

 

And then he's telling her and he can barely believe he is; his words escaping in hard cracked syllables, breaking off into sobs and heaves.

 

He tells her what he did.

 

He visits their graves, he falls apart and then he goes home and reignites his rage. He looks at the only goddamn photo he has left of them. He wishes he still had Lisa’s storybook and Junior’s truck. He wishes he could still remember the sound of Maria’s laugh, the exact shade of her hair, the way her perfume smelled different on her depending on the heat of the day.

 

He tells her that last year, after he was done, after he'd drowned himself in tears he went out, he found a man who raped a teenage girl and he tore him apart. He didn't stab him or shoot him, he didn't strangle him. He couldn't have it that clean. He used his fists, he used his feet. He turned him into a pinkish brown stain on the ground floor of an abandoned warehouse and he threw anything that remained into the river. He's a piece of shit because he did it for him, not the girl. The girl is still out there somewhere, licking her wounds, reliving her trauma, seeing that sorry excuse for human scum every single time she closes her eyes.

 

“I'm not a good man,” he tells her. “I'm not a white knight.”

 

She nods. She knows.

 

“We have enough of those already,” she whispers. “Any more and we'd get confused.”

 

He's not sure what to make of that but he lets it slide. He's difficult enough without adding to it. He doesn't want to run out of grace. Not yet anyway.

 

She raises her hand to touch his cheek. And this time he does turn into it, he does nuzzle her palm. And he does kiss her fingers.

 

And he should do none of these things.

 

But she doesn't flinch. She doesn't pull away. She runs her thumb along his cheekbone and it's like a rush of cool water along the parched sand of a desert. It's sweet and gentle. Soothing. And he wants to fall into her again. He wants to move over her, cover her body with his, get rid of that tight little skirt, the blouse that's doing a remarkably shitty job of hiding the lacy bra underneath. He wants to kiss her neck, whisper nonsense in her ears and just forget everything that's ever happened until it doesn't matter where anyone was at any goddamn time because right now they're here. They're here and it's now and that's all that matters.

 

Just like she said.

 

He almost asks her. He almost begs her. But he doesn't have the balls. He doesn't have it in him to see the disappointment in her eyes, hear the rejection on her lips.

 

But then she's asking him to carry on, to tell her what happened after he murdered the girl’s rapist.

 

“What did you do then Frank? What happened next?”

 

_I met a girl. I met the only girl that matters._

 

He tells her that in the months that followed he did much the same thing. Not always so violent but close enough. He took down the Irish, put them on meathooks and then went and shot up a hospital.

 

Saw her for the first time.

 

He wants to say the rest is history but it's not.

 

And then he looks into her goddamn eyes and he realises it is.

 

But if they're having a moment she's good at hiding it, so he suspects this is all him because Karen Page is shit at hiding her goddamn feelings. She’s shit at pretending.

 

He guesses that's a good thing. He's shit at it too.

 

And he realises he's almost sobbing, that he's doing every damn thing he can to hold it in, that if he let's it out that's it and she’ll drown with him.

 

She knows it too. He knows she does. And yet she presses forwarded. Kind and gentle, but firm and determined. The same way she was in his bed.

 

And God, _oh God_ he can't think of that now. He can't.

 

He _won't_.

 

“And tonight?” she asks.

 

He tries to give her a hard look. He tries but his eyes are too wet and his voice is too cracked and he thinks that even if it was possible to dish out mean looks in the state he's in, she probably wouldn't waver anyway.

 

As it is she gives him nothing. Absolutely nothing. Blue eyes big and clear, expectant. Mouth soft and shining, lips slightly open and that goddamn piece of hair curling over her cheek and he has to press his nails into his palm to stop himself reaching for it.

 

He clears his throat. Swallows hard.

 

“Tonight I came here.”

 

He doesn't know what else to say. He went to their graves, he stood there alone looking at the two little headstones, the larger on between them. He put flowers on them and thought of all the things they could have had: the Christmases and birthdays, Lisa going to prom, Junior joining the football team… Maria, maybe with another baby in her arms.

Then he thought of all the things he missed already, those birthdays and those Christmases. Lisa’s first day of school, Junior’s swimming classes, Maria giving birth and him being thousands of miles away and leaving her mother to hold her hand and talk her through it.

 

He thought about all of it. Everything he lost, everything he could have had. Everything he wanted.

 

Then he came here.

 

There wasn't any kind of natural progression. Not like last year when he let his rage get the better of him and went out hunting for blood. This year it just seemed so simple. Pay his respects, lose himself in them, feel the ground being ripped out from under him and then find Karen Page and ask her to fix it.

 

And she couldn't. She couldn’t and he shouldn't have imagined she could.

 

“Why?” she asks. It's not exasperated or annoyed. It's gentle, curious, sweet even. Like every other goddamn thing about her.

 

He shrugs.

 

“I guess I just didn't want to be alone.”

 

It seems so simple, so trite, such an incredibly pat way of putting it. But sometimes these things are simple. Sometimes they don't need to be anything else. She takes the pain away. There's no reason to pretend she doesn't. There's rage and hurt and then there's her and sometimes even he needs to take a break.

 

“You don't have to have to talk about it,” she says. “You can…”

 

She trails off and he doesn't want to know what she was going to say, wants to keep it for himself and his own imagination, something to open up when it all gets too much. Something he can mold into whatever he needs.

 

He gets to keep that. He looks at her and imagines she knows it too.

 

They're quiet for a while, nothing but the sound of their breathing and the muted late-night traffic outside.

 

The world seems very far away. Where it should be.

 

Her thumb rubs over his knuckles again and it's slower this time, almost exploratory. There's a sensuality to it he's not sure she intends but it turns his skin to gooseflesh and sends a small shiver up his spine.

 

“Saw Murdock,” he says and he doesn't know why. It's none of his goddamn business if she's found a way to make it work. It's none of his goddamn business if she's pretending or in denial. It's also none of his goddamn business if Murdock has finally got his head out of his ass and sees her for the fucking saint she is.

 

The fact is, at the end of the day, after everything, Karen Page is none of his goddamn business.

 

“He walked me home,” she says and it doesn't sound like she's scrambling, looking for ways to divert his attention. “He's looking into something going on down at the docks, some of those fancy yachts owned by Stuttafords. Money laundering or ponzi schemes or something … he asked me if I knew anything.”

 

“Do you?”

 

She shakes her head.

 

“He asked me to keep an eye out. Let him know,” she sighs. “Sometimes I think this city keeps getting sicker. That no matter how much we try and clean it up all it does is leave a gap for the next person… Matt sees it too.”

 

There's a strange kind of familiarity in the way she says that. It's not quite intimacy but it's close.

 

He tells himself he won't ask. He doesn't want to know either way. Because it'll destroy him if they're together and it'll annihilate him if they aren't.

 

He can't win in this situation. There are only bad outcomes.

 

She seems to realise this too and she doesn't elaborate, doesn't offer up anything.

 

Until she does.

 

“I don't wanna talk about Matt now,” she says.

 

He nods. That makes two of them. They spoke about him enough the last time.

 

But that brings up the bigger question, the more important question.

 

What is it he does want to talk about? What is it he does want to say to her?

 

He knows the answer to that could simply be nothing and she'd leave it at that. She knows when to press and when not to, when to speak to him and when to leave him to his melancholy. It's the anniversary of his wife's death - he can't see Karen Page employing her tough love strategies now.

 

They could just sit here like this, touching in this way they both know they shouldn't, her killing him softly with each stroke of her fingers. Him letting her. There's no need for anything else.

 

And yet… and yet he does want to talk. He just doesn't know about what before he's already spoken.

 

“You didn't say goodbye,” he says. “The last time… when you…”

 

He trails off. He's not talking about _that_ night - even though it would still hold true because she didn't say goodbye then either - but somehow it feels like he is. Like he's accusing her and taking her back to a place neither of them are ready to go. Maybe ever.

 

But then she frowns and something passes over her face that looks like guilt. Shame even.

 

“I… I didn't want to disturb you…”

 

There's some truth to it, but not much. It's a sliver, a homeopathic antidote to the real lie. It's diluted and almost undetectable, and as a substitute for real truth it works almost as well.

 

“Don't do that,” he says. “You come to my house in the middle of the night, rip me a new one and suddenly you're worried about disturbing me…”

 

_You could never disturb me. You could never be a burden. You know that. You have to._

 

She shrugs. “I was embarrassed.”

 

“Then say so.”

 

“Saying it now.”

 

“Why?” he asks.

 

“I came to your house in the middle of the night…”

 

“Come on,” he says and then he rubs his thumb along her knuckles and her breath catches in her throat. “You know that doesn't matter.”

 

_You know._

 

She does.

 

But then she sighs. “Yeah but maybe it should.”

 

Again. Again that night. However oblique the reference to it he knows she's talking about him and her and the line they crossed and the fact that no matter how hard they try they can't go back. And there's a part of him that's not sure he wants to. And with the way her eyes are shining and the way she's surreptitiously looking at his mouth he wonders if it's not the same for her.

 

And suddenly he wants it all out in the open. He wants to ask her about it. He wants this cleared away. Fixed. Not like they did the last time. Not the talk that only led to them starting it all over again. No, he wants an actual conversation. One with truths and realities. One where they both act like adults and not lovestruck horny teenagers. And even beyond that, even if there was a way to take everything they did with each other and hide it away and just sort what was left, he finds he doesn't want that sort of thing to matter anyway. He doesn't want her to feel she can't come to him, wake him up, scare the shit out of him and then fall asleep in his bed.

 

He glances at their combined hands, the way the light reflects in her eyes. He can see that place just behind her ear that he put his lips against and it made her skin prickle and her body go still beneath his, and he realises with a frightening kind of clarity, he wants her to be that for him too.

 

He has no right. It's too much to ask. Way way too much.

 

But then she pulls her fingers out of his and suddenly, despite the warmth of her apartment, he feels cold.

 

“You're staying here tonight.” It's not a request, it's not even an offer. He guesses she knows what the answer will be if she gives him place to back out.

 

Part of him thinks he should protest though. Make a show of it. But that feels like lying and he's so goddamn tired of pretending not to lie to her.

 

And he's grateful again that she's taken the option off the table.

 

“Ma’a… Karen?”

 

“You're staying here. I don't want you to be alone. I need to know you're okay.”

 

And that's what kills him. Nothing else that came before hurts half as much.

 

He sucks in a breath that somehow manages to hit him right in the diaphragm. It hurts and it burns and he doesn't trust himself not to start blabbering again.

 

He wants to tell her not to say that; to never ever say it again. He wants to tell her that he can't have someone care about him like that or that much, that he can't care back.

 

But he does. Oh dear god he does. And all he can do is breathe and hope for the pain to ebb.

 

Whenever that may be.

 

She puts a hand on his shoulder and then seemingly more on a whim than anything else kisses his brow.

 

She shouldn't do that.

 

She shouldn't make the world stop either.

 

She has no fucking right.

 

But she does. And again he finds he's grateful.

 

Karen Page’s mouth on his skin… he's the last man on earth who deserves that.

 

“Please…” he whispers. It doesn't matter that he has no idea what he's even asking. All that matters is that she does.

 

Fingers in his hair, thumb across his lips. He thinks he might fall apart but then she's pulling him against her, letting him bury his head in her shoulder, her hair.

 

“You don’t have to be afraid,” she says.

 

But she’s so wrong. He _does_ need to be afraid. He needs to be very fucking afraid. Because every minute - _every second_ \- that he’s here with her, he realises more and more that whatever they had, whatever they did, is still living between them. That it has no intention of going away and if anything it’s getting stronger and more desperate.

 

He can’t. He won’t.

 

It can never happen again. Never. Not matter how much they might want it to.

 

He makes himself this promise even as he wonders when they’re going to it. It feels naive to hold onto the notion that they won’t.

 

In time she lets him go and sits back. She ignores the way his hands slide to her waist, the way his fingers twitch on her and he digs them into hips.

 

She looks at him for a long time, hands on his face and fingers caressing his cheeks, his brow, his mouth and then she finally, after she’s broken him again she fetches him a pillow and a navy blanket that smells just like her.

 

“Are you hungry?” she asks. “Can I get you anything?”

 

He shakes his head.

 

“You don't need to…”

 

“No,” she says. “No I do.”

 

“You don't owe me shit.”

 

“It's not about that,” she says firmly. “You _know_ that Frank. You do.”

 

Again he wants to kiss her, again he almost asks. But when he opens his mouth something else comes out. Something he doesn't expect but she did.

 

“Don't leave.”

 

She smiles. A genuine honest-to-god smile. The same damn one he found himself looking forward to every goddamn day he saw her during the trial. The same damn one that pulled the rug out from under him before he fucked it all up that night in the diner.

 

“I won't,” she says and he's about to clarify that he isn't talking about something nebulous or vague. He's not asking her to stay in some abstract sense of keeping herself in his life.

 

He's asking her to stay here. With him. On the couch. Stay with him while he gets through the second night like this in his life. The night that’s different but still exactly the same as every other night in his life for the past two years.

 

Except for one.

 

She already knows.

 

He pushes the pillow in behind him, wedges himself so he's half sitting, half lying against it.

 

She doesn't miss a beat. She sits, leans into his side, takes a minute to let him put his arm around her while she wrestles with the blanket, and finally tentatively rests her head on his shoulder.

 

There's a few long moments that neither of them say anything and he's mildly surprised that it's not as awkward as he thought.

 

He can smell her hair though, something heady and fresh like strawberry or melon, and he can feel how she’s pressing her forehead into his neck almost the same way she did before when she came and whispered his name into the night like a promise. 

And suddenly it feels like she's all there is in the world: her skin, her smell, the sound of her breathing mingling with the sound of his; how all he needs to do is turn his head slightly and he’ll be able to kiss her hair, her forehead. Maybe her mouth too. 

  

She’ll taste sweet like her lip gloss and then she’ll taste sweet like her. And she’ll drag him down on top of her, arch her neck so he can find that spot again, make her go still with his teeth and his tongue…

 

_Stop it._

 

_Just fucking stop it._

 

She shifts against him, hand slowly coming to rest on his chest.

 

“This alright?” he asks.

 

She's quiet for a few seconds and then she shrugs. “Maybe. I don't know … probably not”

 

It's the truth. It's all he can really ask for. It's all she gives him anyway. And maybe it is okay. Maybe this is how they make it less weird, maybe this is how they put that night away and pretend it never happened.

 

Hair of the dog that bit you and all.

 

He doesn't believe it. Not for a second.

 

He also doesn't much care.

 

She's here and she's soft and she's gentle and it's not hard to admit to himself that despite everything, he needs her. He needs her in his life. He needs to be able to go to her at times like these, be with her in a way he didn't want to think was possible after Maria died.

 

It's not even about sex. He wonders if it ever was.

 

“It’s gonna be okay.”

 

Her voice startles him and he glances at her but she hasn't moved.

 

“All of this,” she says. “It's all going to be okay.”

 

He doesn't know what she's talking about. What aspect of “this” she's trying to explain to him. If it's him or her or them together. If it's Maria and his children and the fucking empty space inside him that sucks everything into it like a black hole.

 

If it's something else entirely.

 

And she sounds so sure of herself, so confident and steady. Like she's personally seen the future and there's nothing in it but goodness.

 

He wants so much to believe her but he doesn't have that kind of grace within him anymore.

 

He wonders if he ever did.

 

For now it doesn’t matter.

 

He drifts. She does too and he listens to her breathing growing deep and regular and his going much the same way.

 

Later, he gathers her closer, drags her into him and presses a kiss into her hair - tries not to hold too tight.

 

He fails.

 

It's okay, she holds on too. Both hands.

 

For the second time in two years he sleeps like a baby.

 

~~~

 

It's early when he wakes up, the first rays of morning light shining dimly through her curtains and casting silver shadows on her hair. Their coffee is still on the table, cold and murky, hers with a milky skin on the top.

 

Whiskey. Coffee. Redemption.

 

She brings gifts. Again she brings gifts.

 

He glances down at her. Mostly he can see the crown of her head, the ridge of her shoulder. Her hand now tangled in his, resting on his belly.

 

He tightens his fingers on hers, gets the sleepiest squeeze in return.

 

It’s a little ripple in the stillness, small and faint enough not to disturb the peace. Not yet at least.

 

The blanket is gone, slipped off them some time during the night and now puddling at their feet but he’s not cold. She's like a little fire in his arms.

 

She burns.

 

He does too.

 

_Oh god, he does too._

 

Outside he can hear start of the early morning traffic. It's faint and removed for now but he knows it won't stay that way for long even though it's a Saturday and nobody has any business being out at this time.

 

Except him.

 

He knows he has to go.

 

There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's nowhere he needs to get to, no one he needs to go and pull apart. He could hold her, fall back asleep to the sound of her breathing, press kisses into her skin and let her do the same to him.

 

But he can't stay here. He can't watch her wake up. He can't answer all those awkward questions. Can’t wait for the moment where she either disentangles herself from him or takes him into her bed.

 

Either possibility is a tragedy. Either way someone’s heart breaks.

 

He's not sure he's ready for that.

 

Not sure he ever will be.

 

He pulls her close for a moment, lets the smell of her fill him, tries to imprint the sleepy weight of her into his skin, his bones. He wants to remember this. He wants to hold onto what this feels like. He wants to be able to go to it when the world is just too overwhelming and he can't kill it back into making sense anymore.

 

She's a safe place, even though she really isn't and he knows he's a fool for even considering it.

 

And then he does kiss her. It's chaste but he lingers for a moment, lips pressed to her hair again and he gives himself a second to believe that maybe just maybe something like this could happen again.

 

But only a second.

 

He knows what it means to dwell on these things too long. He knows what it means to drown in them.

 

And then slides out from next to her, ignores the cold pressure of the empty air, and lowers her slowly onto the pillow.

 

She mumbles something throaty and incoherent and he hushes her softly, lifts the blanket off the floor and spreads it over her.

 

“You going?” she asks sleepily.

 

He touches her cheek with his thumb, runs it down to her jaw. Her skin is soft like he remembers. Smooth.

 

He did this before. Did it while he loomed over her in the dark. When he was harder than a diamond for her and her thighs were glistening with her desire for him. When he whispered her name and she whispered his and it sounded like a promise.

 

This isn't like that. It's close though. So very close.

 

He almost doesn't leave. He almost can't make himself do it.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You don't have to.”

 

But he does.

 

“You sleep Karen. You sleep.”

 

He touches her hair again, adjusts the blanket.

 

“Will you come back?” she asks.

 

_Wild fucking horses couldn’t keep me away._

 

He doesn't answer though. He can't.

 

It's too much and too real. And at the end of the day he remains a piece of shit who is unworthy of pretty much every woman who ever loved him, no matter how nebulous that definition of love might be.

 

Despite it all though, it feels like there's something new in the day as he steps out her door. The weak sun seems brighter and the hole in his chest doesn't feel quite so big. The rage is still there but it's not that hard to ignore.

 

He doesn't feel like he's breaking apart, that his edges are fraying.

 

He pulls her door closed, listens to the lock click into place.

 

_It's going to be okay. All of this._

 

He's still not convinced. Not even a little bit. But he wants to fight the idea less than he did before.

 

~~~

 

_He saves Matt’s life._

 

_There's a few long moments that she doesn't believe it possible - that there's no way she's going to get another blessing tonight, no way she’ll live and so will two of the people who mean most to her in the world. She's not that lucky. She's too far in the red and cosmic goodwill doesn't stretch that far._

 

_Not for her._

 

_The black water, the hell sky, the death still bubbling out of her throat._

 

_But then there’s Frank. Always Frank. Fixing it and making it right. Finding her the grace she doesn't deserve and didn't earn._

 

_Not from him._

 

_He's dragging Matt out of the river, pulling him up so that he's lying in the sand next to where she's still on all fours._

 

_She tries to move, but Frank pushes her back._

 

_“You stay,” he says again._

 

You stay. You live. You worry about that and leave this to me.

 

_She hears it all. He never had to use a lot of words with her. They always got each other on a level a little deeper than they should. Somewhere a little too close to home._

 

_“Is he…?” she's not sure what she's asking._

 

_Ear against Matt’s chest and he shakes his head._

 

_“He's alive,” he says. He doesn't offer anything else but it's enough._

 

_She feels tears of relief burning her eyes and she has to gasp and gulp in the frigid night air as they start to fall._

 

_He gave her the grace she didn't deserve._

 

_He gave her mercy. And God, all she needs is a little mercy._

 

_He comes to her then, pulls her to her feet, the sodden evening gown flapping around her legs, slapping against her skin in the cold wind._

 

_She takes a breath, coughs, and then he's reaching into the pocket of his coat, pulling out his phone and shoving it into her shaking hands._

 

_He's saying something about an ambulance and something about a hospital, something else about hypothermia._

 

_Bad to worse. The blink of an eye._

 

_And then he takes a moment to touch her face, run his thumb down her cheek and across her lips. It's like all those times before. Gentle. Soft. Everything he wants to say in one slow caress._

 

_Him looming over her in his bed. Him saying goodbye one mild June morning._

 

_She has everything._

 

_There's no reason to pretend she doesn’t._

 

_Behind him another explosion rocks the yacht and she can hear more people screaming._

 

_And then he's gone, back into the water, swimming as fast as he can._

 

_Frank Castle. The Punisher._

 

_Her white knight._

  
  
  



	3. Do you worry that you're happier at war than at peace?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as usual when I try and predict how long something is going to be, I end up being wrong. I think this will now be five chapters - I'm hoping it won't be more.
> 
> Anyway, not much to say other than thank you for your reviews, they really do inspire me to keep writing for this ship, and I hope you enjoy.

_She breaks his heart._

 

_It feels like something she does so often now it should be second nature, but the truth is it doesn't get any easier._

 

_They cut her out of her evening dress when she got to the hospital. Six hundred dollars of satin and embroidery and now it's shreds. Somewhere she managed to lose the shoes too. Another sparkling three hundred dollars down the drain._

 

_It was an expensive evening but, sitting at Matt’s bedside while he sleeps, she knows the real cost is still to be paid and will be much higher._

 

_Much, much higher._

 

_She keeps Frank’s coat around her shoulders until Claire comes to give her some turquoise scrubs and the most hideous shoes she's ever seen. Claire tells her she's going to be okay. She has no wounds, no burns, no internal bleeding. Secondary drowning is off the table too. She should thank her lucky stars that there was a knight in shining armour to save her._

 

_She tells Claire that his armour doesn't shine, that his knighthood is a lie but his nobility isn't._

 

_Claire shrugs. It doesn't matter. She has a guardian angel or devil or demon and he's the reason she's alive. Everything else is just white noise._

 

 _That's true. Everything else_ is _just white noise and she doesn't know why she didn't see it before. Why she let so many other things get in the way and why she allowed the distractions to take over._

 

_But, speaking of noise and distractions, the sirens outside never seem to end. Neither do the explosions at the docks nor the people being ferried in on gurneys every minute._

 

_Claire doesn't stay. The hospital is way past capacity and resources are already stretched and things are only going to get worse._

 

_On the news she hears it's an act of domestic terrorism. She can't believe she didn't see it earlier._

 

_Matt is stable and they expect him to wake up soon and no one can be bothered to question her presence at his side, so she stays with him._

 

_She doesn't hold his hand and she tries not to think about everything she has to tell him when he wakes up. The crushing disappointment she has to mete out on him again. He asked her to try and she lied to him and said she would. She’ll need to find a way to atone for that; make a few confessions, maybe a couple of Hail Marys._

 

_Karen Page doesn't escape karma. She never has._

 

_And now she has to break his heart. That's her role. That's her legacy. She breaks hearts._

 

_And she really needs to stop doing that._

 

_There's a flurry of movement outside the room and she sees a group of doctors hurrying down the hall, someone saying something about a Code Red. They're followed by some nurses, a team of paramedics._

 

_She hopes whatever's broken can be fixed._

 

_And then for one small blissful moment everything stops. No sirens, no explosions, no noises in the halls. It's like the world takes a breath to let the dust settle before it starts again._

 

_And when it does it starts with a gentle, low knock on the door to Matt’s ward._

 

Tap-tap-tap.

 

_She knows it's him before she even looks up. Frank Castle, big and dark and brooding, his presence sucking the light out of the room and drawing her in, asking her to drown once more tonight._

 

_He nods towards the corridor, slips silently from view._

 

_He wants her to come to him._

 

_So she does._

 

_She always does._

 

~~~

 

He brings her gifts.

 

It’s not whiskey or coffee and it’s not anything more intimate than that either, but it is everything he can dig up on that Stuttaford’s case Red was on about: secret and unscheduled meetings between the company’s lawyers and Fisk’s; some or other Ukrainian connection; people going missing, pensions disappearing too. Someone important has a son in jail in Belgrade for hacking up five prostitutes. He’s not sure that’s even connected but he brings it to her anyway.

 

He stops by a few times a month when he has something to show her. He always waits until Murdock has left and he never asks about him, but she says enough so that he knows there’s nothing going on. Murdock’s visits are as platonic as his.

 

It shouldn’t interest him but that doesn’t mean anything. The heart wants what the heart wants, and on some level he recognises that his interest in the story is both a way to occupy his time and thoughts, as it is an opportunity to be near her.

 

He accepts this. He doesn’t bother trying to deny it or twist it into something it’s not. It is what it is. He’s helping her and helping himself at the same time. He’s not oblivious.

 

And he knows that sounds suspicious and he wonders if he’s not taking advantage on some level. But then he’ll look over to her, her glasses perched on the end of her nose and her coffee going cold beside her as she pores over some new piece of evidence that he’s brought her, and he knows it isn’t true.

 

She’s grateful and even though it’s not her gratitude he wants, he’s happy to help and she’s happy to let him.

 

It’s also not awkward. Not much anyway. There are still those moments he’ll look at her and see that curl of her hair or that spot on her neck that he knows just how to kiss and lick to make her go still. He’ll still catch his gaze drifting to her breasts, her legs, that hot sweet space between.

 

She notices too. She can’t not. But she doesn’t say anything and he thinks it might be because in many ways she’s also guilty - he doesn’t miss how she’ll rest against him while she’s reading, nor the way she’s taken to claiming his coffee absently out of his hands and drinking it herself. It’s a familiarity he never expected to find again, but it’s there and he’s not willing to do anything to change it.

 

He never spends the night. She offers though. Sometimes it gets late while they’re sitting there piecing together the puzzle -  often they even hear the first sounds of the morning traffic and realise with a start that the time has disappeared and it’s 4am and they’ve lost the night to each other again - and that’s when she says he can stay. That’s when he refuses and takes it as a cue to leave. And he wonders if he’s only imagining the disappointment in her eyes.

 

For the most part though it’s good. He finds it in himself to ignore the more difficult aspects of their relationship and he manages to compartmentalise the things they’ve done together alongside who they are now and the things they can't do.

 

They never talk about That Night. Never. Not even the most oblique of oblique references. They don’t really mention the other two nights either although when they do come up, it doesn’t feel as real and raw as it should.

 

He wonders if this is how they become friends again. He wonders if this is how they go back and right all the wrongs.

 

How they forget.

 

Except he knows deep down that he’s never going to forget. A man doesn’t spend the night with Karen Page and just carry on walking around and living like it never happened. She doesn’t allow it. She tears him in half first, makes him feel it in every goddamn cell in his body, and puts him back together at her leisure.

 

And he’s apparently still a work in progress.

 

He’s still broken.

 

But so is she.

 

So there they are. Him dressed all in black and Karen Page in her sweatpants and chunky socks, a cardigan that smells just like her. And she’s leaning against him like he’s a piece of furniture - a fixture in her world she can’t imagine not having.

 

Sometimes he wonders if he's like an attack dog that’s fallen in love with the good life and thinks he belongs on the couch, where he’ll sit quietly and wait for a kind word or a pat on the head and hope nobody notices he's covered in blood and filth.

 

It should enrage him but it doesn’t come anywhere close.

 

“Fuck!”

 

Next to him she stands up in a little whirlwind of papers and rage. She puts her glasses on the table and goes to rest against the wall near the bookcase, pinching the bridge of her nose.

 

He glances at the sheets of yellow paper and Post-it notes now strewn across the floor; the columns and columns of numbers and her neat handwriting categorizing all of it.

 

“What’s up?”

 

She sighs loudly, tugs at the sleeves of her cardigan.

 

“I’ve been trying to follow the money trail…”

 

He nods.

 

“There was close of $70 million unaccounted for and now I’ve just found a fucking cheque made out to environmental charity for pretty much that amount of money.”

 

“That’s a shitload of cash for a charity. Is this from the pension fund? Is the charity part of the parent company?”

 

She covers her eyes, leans her head back against the wall. “I don’t know. There are so many holding companies and dummy corporations all running separate scams that I can’t keep track. I thought this was the pension scheme but now it seems the money came from one of the other branches and I can’t figure out for the life of me what the hell that branch is supposed to be doing.”

 

“It’s dirty either way,” he says. “I mean, no one needs to put their cash through that kind of a loop if they ain’t hiding something.”

 

“Yeah, no one _needs_ to, but it’s not illegal to move it around like this. We’ve got to prove they are hiding something first…”

 

She’s quiet for a second and then she speaks again.

 

“Ugh. We trying to prove they’re doing something illegal by following something that’s not illegal so that we can prove that thing is illegal. It’s like a fucking vicious cycle. Every damn time I think I have it, I lose it.”

 

She’s always been hard on herself, always her harshest and most unfair critic.

 

“Hey,” he says, standing up and walking towards her. “It’s okay. This is complicated. We’ll get there.”

 

She runs her fingers across her scalp, grabs at her hair. “Ellison is losing patience with me.”

 

“Ellison is an asshole.”

 

She shakes her head. “He is but he’s also not… god if I don’t find anything then how much time have we wasted here?”

 

That hurts. He knows she doesn’t mean it to. He knows there was no hidden message in her words and she wasn’t making a jab at him. But it still hurts.

 

“Come on,” he says. “It’s late, we’ve been doing this for hours. You need a break.”

 

“We don't have time for a break.”

 

“Sure we do. Ain't nothing going to happen at...” He checks his watch. “2am on Sunday morning.”

 

“God, is that the time?”

 

“Two-oh-four. Eastern Daylight Savings Time... ma'am.”

 

She makes a dry sound in the back of her throat and he’s sure she’ll brush him off, go back to the couch and pick her papers off the floor, start from the beginning with those $70 million dollars. But she doesn't.

 

Instead she cocks her head, raises an eyebrow and there's something almost playful in the way she looks at him.

 

“A break huh?” she says. “I didn’t know the Punisher took breaks.”

 

She’s teasing. She doesn’t do this often - he thinks she’s worried it sounds too much like flirting - but it loosens something in his chest, eases some of that terrible fear he has and he can’t help but rise to the bait.

 

“One of the perks of the job,” he says.

 

“Is that so?”

 

He nods.

 

“You have dental too?”

 

He snorts. “Yeah. Company car. I work my own hours. Performance bonus.”

 

She chuckles and she’s so good and so pretty and all he wants to do is take her in his arms, kiss her hair. It doesn’t even need to go further than that. It could be all the ever do with each other for the rest of their lives. It would be enough.

 

 _She_ would be enough.

 

“Performance bonus? What for?” her voice jolts him out of his thoughts but he doesn’t miss a beat.

 

“Exceeded my meathook quota…”

 

She laughs. Her voice is rich and throaty and he feels it all the way to his toes and back. And then he’s grinning too and he has no idea why. It wasn’t even that funny. In fact it wasn’t funny at all. But it just feels so good to see her like this - happy and beautiful and completely and utterly mesmerising.

 

He caused it. He changed this when it could have gone bad and she could have been sad and angry. He turned it around.

 

He didn’t realise he could still do that. Didn't realise he could ever want to.

 

It gives him a sudden newfound purpose, a confidence that he’d not necessarily lost but just hadn’t had much use for anymore.

 

“Come on,” he says and grabs his keys off the table.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Out.”

 

She narrows her eyes, purses her lips.

 

“At 2am? There some dangerous people out there Frank.”

 

He snorts again, looks down at himself, at his knuckles which are still scabbed over from putting down a child molester last week. “I think we’ll be okay. Bring your .38. You can protect me if something goes wrong.”

 

It's out of his mouth before he realises it might not be the right thing to say. She still has her demons and shooting James Wesley is one of them.

 

But then she grins. “Okay. Just don't get in my way.”

 

He wouldn't dream of it.

 

He shakes his head, holds up his hands. “No ma'am.”

 

Another laugh and he's smiling too and he wonders at how easy this is, how he's fallen into it with her. How it feels exactly the same and exactly different to how it was with Maria.

 

He pushes the thought away. It's a raw wound. One that he's not even bothering to try and lick clean.

 

She glances down at her grey yoga pants, her cream cardigan.

 

“Do I need to change?”

 

_Not for a second. Not ever. You're perfect just the way you are._

 

“No you look great.”   

 

He says it with a edge to his voice but he's not lying. It doesn't matter to him what she's wearing. She always looks great.

 

She grimaces.

 

“Give me a minute.”

 

And before he can object and tell her he really was just joking, she's walking to her bedroom, only half closing the door behind her.

 

He tries not to wonder about what that means. If it's a good or bad thing and what exactly those definitions of good or bad could be.

 

He doesn't get to think about it for too long though. Less than two minutes later she's out again. She still has her cardigan but she's replaced her sweat pants for dark jeans and her socks for a pair of ballet flats.

 

It's just her. No fuss, no frills. No perfectly curled hair or tight little skirts that hug her ass, heels high enough to reach heaven. It's just her. But she's perfect and his breath catches in his throat all the same.

 

“Okay,” she grabs her purse and slings it over her shoulder. “Let's see this company car of yours.”

 

He smiles, almost reaches out to take her hand, but stops himself.

 

It's so easy to forget with her. She makes everything so damn easy and so damn hard at the same time.

 

But then she's heading for the door and his hand does find its way to her back, to rest between her shoulder blades as they head out into the Hell’s Kitchen night.

 

~~~

 

They don't speak much as he drives. It feels familiar and only slightly awkward like they've done this before but in different lives when they were different people with different stories.

 

She laughs at his music selection and he pretends to be offended. She has every right though but it wouldn't make a difference even if she didn't. He's starting to wonder if there's anything she could do to stop him feeling this way, to stop him allowing her to reach her hands into his chest, find his heart and squeeze until it explodes all over both of them.

 

He's starting to wonder if he even wants to stop that.

 

He steals glances at her. He thinks she knows but she doesn't react. She gazes out the window, watching the late night traffic: the police cruisers turning the city blue and red; some drunk and rowdy partygoers making their way home or more than likely to another party; the homeless settling for the night and a few prostitutes just getting started.

 

Hell’s Kitchen has the worst of everything. But she's here and she's next to him and it has the best of everything too.

 

And suddenly he has to fight to keep his hands on the steering wheel, clenching his fingers until they turns white.

 

He wants to take her hands in his, kiss them and ask her - no, _beg_ her - to tell him how she does this. How she's managed to shut out that night, how she manages to carry on each day without his moans and words ringing in her ears. How she's managed to forget what it felt like, how good it was and how they couldn’t stop it no matter how hard they tried.

 

Not a day goes by without him remembering how she was in his bed, how she rose up above him, head thrown back, breasts thrust forward. How her nails dug into his flesh and he bore the welts for days after; how he knows she did the same with the bruises he sucked into her skin.

 

He wants to ask all this. Damn this delicate balance they've found, damn it because he knows as well as she does that it's a lie.

 

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't want to break it.

 

Something is better than nothing. And they have something even he doesn't have a name for it.

 

“Where are we going?” she asks after a while.

 

His mouth quirks.

 

“I'm running away. Don't have a clue what you're doing.”

 

It has more truth than he anticipated but she doesn't hear it.

 

Instead she grins, leans back in her seat and closes her eyes. “Sign me up. I'm running away too.”

 

He doesn't laugh.

 

_Would you though? Would you run away with me Karen Page?_

 

He lets himself entertain the idea for a few seconds. But only a few.

 

He _could_ just keep driving the goddamn truck into nowhere, stop where the road ends. Make a home. Make a life. He has money and they won't need much more than each other. He could take her away and she could do the same for him. Be with her, stay with her. It doesn't matter what they are or what they become. They don't need to label it. They'll be together.

 

He doesn't allow much more than that. It's the kind of fantasy a man can lose himself in and he was getting lost already. It doesn't take long.

 

With her, it doesn’t take long at all.

 

He turns right at the river, makes his way up towards 1st. If he carried on going he’d eventually get to the turn off which would take him to the place he once called home. Or at least the ashes of what it used to be.

 

She must know it too. She's been there after all. Snooping around in his life before she even knew him well enough to know if he was worth the snooping. He's so glad she did though because despite every fucking ridiculous thing that's happened in his life in the past year he's not convinced he’d be here without her.

 

The city centre eventually starts giving way to the first signs of suburbia, the streetlights slowly being replaced by trees and flower beds. Parks. He passes one that Lisa used to love that they didn't come to often enough and then another that Junior used drag them all to because of the ducks and how he's get a kick out of watching them turn themselves upside down in the water.

 

He sighs. He didn't actually intend this as a trip down memory lane but apparently it is what it is. And the truth is if he has to be here, Karen Page is probably the one person in the world he'd want with him.

 

But again, it's too much for now. Far too many wounds. Far too much rage and pain to put away forever.

 

Eventually he spots what he's looking for. Nestled between an upmarket restaurant and an all-night convenience store is an innocuous looking coffee and pastry shop hidden under a red and white awning. He's oddly relieved and frankly more than a little surprised to see it's still exists.

 

He parks outside and for a moment he just looks at the window display, the miniature cakes and pastries lined up neatly like little soldiers, the decorative coffee beans scattered between them. And of course the obnoxiously big sign declaring they're open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

 

It's been so long since he's been here. So very long. Before Junior was born.

 

The thought makes him ache. It's not even so much the loss of him. Of them. He deals with that every single day in a million different ways. It's more that it was a different time. A different life. A life when he was a dad, complete with bad jokes and piggyback rides, ambitions of teaching his son to drive a stick and watching his girl grow up to take on the world. He was as white picket fence as a man could be without the goddamn white picket fence.

 

But now he's here and all of that's gone and in its place is something else. Something dark and angry. Blood on his hands, rage in his heart. And a woman he should never have had but somehow has, sitting by his side.

 

Again he thinks he might hate her for that. But again he thinks he loves her more.

 

“All night pastries?” she asks.

 

He purses his lips. Nods.

 

“I had no idea this was even here,” she says as she unbuckles her seatbelt.

 

He shrugs. “You learn these things when it's 2am and your old lady is pregnant and she's got cravings.”

 

There's a moment he thinks he shouldn't have said it and he braces himself for the searing pain that usually shoots through him when he speaks about her.

 

It doesn't come though. It simmers somewhere just below the surface, dreadful and dark but not intense. Not consuming.

 

And then Karen snorts. It’s a weird and wonderful sound and before he's even heard what she's about to say he finds his mouth twisting into a smile.

 

“Pastries and coffee?” she asks disbelievingly. “ _That_ was Maria's weird pregnancy craving?”

 

Usually he doesn't like people saying her name. Not to him. It makes him feel exposed and uncomfortable, like he needs to leap to her defence for some reason he can't quite understand. But somehow when Karen says it, it's okay. It doesn't feel like she's trying to take something away, even if it is his pain.

 

He nods. “Yeah I didn't believe it either.”

 

She laughs and he finds himself being drawn into it too.

 

Even then it seemed unlikely that Maria’s cravings were as mundane as pastries, which also happened to be her favourite indulgence. Even then he didn't believe it.

 

He didn't mind though. She loved him and he loved her. She was carrying their child and a 2am pastry run was nothing compared to that. Nothing compared to everything else he'd do for her just because she damn well asked.

 

But now isn't the moment to be thinking about his dead wife. Now isn't the time to imagine the “what ifs” nor the “if onlys”. He's here and she’s not and she's never going to be again and he has to find a way to live with that. For better or worse.

 

“Come on,” he says. “You want pastries or not?”

 

She nods, smiles. “Sure. What else am I gonna do at _two-oh-four_ on a Sunday morning?”

 

“2:27,” he says absently glancing at his watch.

 

“Eastern Daylight Savings Time … Captain,” she teases.

 

He gives her what he hopes is a dark look but even before she grins at him he knows he's failed. And again he's left wondering what the hell it is about Karen Page that messes him up like she does. How she manages to dig around inside him and bring back every damn thing he tries to fucking hard to push away.

 

He doesn't want to laugh and she makes him laugh. He doesn't want to cry and she makes him cry. He doesn't want to feel anything, to love, and she turns that on its head too. It's like she exists to show him how out of control he really is, how little say he has in anything he does.

 

He hates that he's okay with it.

 

He takes a breath, pushes his door open and steps onto the tarmac.

 

It's a warm evening and the sky is clear - the cozy kind of anticipatory beauty that comes with late September.  No clouds, just a gentle gust of wind and the stars twinkling brightly while the full moon shines down on the world, turning it gold and silver.

 

When him and Maria were first together -  before Lisa came along and changed everything - they'd live for nights like this one. They’d get into the car, drive for God knows how long until they'd left the city so far behind them he wasn't sure they'd find their way back. And then they'd go and park somewhere dark and deserted and lie on the hood, watch the stars and then watch each other while he left the radio to play.

 

She'd indulge his terrible taste in music until she couldn’t anymore and she'd tell him he had a choice. Her or Air Supply. Her or Chicago. Her or Foreigner.

 

It was always the same. She always won. There was never even a question even if he made a show of pretending there was.

 

It's very possible Lisa was conceived on one of those nights, Toto or Boston providing the soundtrack until it didn't anymore. And then there was just her, just Maria and her sweetness and him holding onto her as she drove her hips hard against his and took his breath away.

 

He shakes his head. He can’t… he can’t think about this now. But, he realises as he looks at Karen standing there glimmering like gold in the moonlight, apparently tonight is one of those nights when it's so easy to lose himself.

 

She casts a spell, the one that brought him to his knees before and he's pretty sure will again.

 

And then she's at his side and for a wonderful terrible moment he imagines she's going to take his hand, slide her fingers between his and lead him happily into whatever destruction lies on the other side of that.

 

But she doesn't.

 

She's not nearly as far gone over this as he is. She's not fighting herself every second she spends with him. Not loving and hating him with every breath.  

 

Again he wants to ask her why not but he can't bring himself to say the words. He knows his resolve is crumbling though and one day this dam wall he's constructed in his head - the one that locks away everything that happened between them - is going to break. The cracks are already there.

 

But not tonight.

 

Tonight he’ll hold it together. For him. For her.

 

She touches his arm and then his shoulder, and she can’t not notice the little shiver that courses through him as she does.

 

“We going in? Or do they deliver to the parking lot?”

 

She tries to keep her voice light but he can hear a small tremble in it, a huskiness he remembers all too well but wishes he didn't.

 

He glances around again once. There's no one in sight, the world oddly quiet and deserted. He could be the only man on earth, her the only woman.

 

And then they head inside to shatter that illusion.

 

~~~

 

The thing about this particularly bakery is it’s built to bake and not to entertain. It never bothered him before because he was taking everything home anyway. But now the stark white walls and the bright downlights make him think more of a morgue or an operating theatre than a place to eat.

 

She sees it too. There isn't much she misses.

 

So when a tall long-haired waiter, who went from half dead as they walked in to turbo charged when he caught a glimpse of Karen, asks them if they want menus, they both shake their heads.

 

There's a grim satisfaction in seeing the disappointment on his face.

 

It doesn't deter him though. He drags his hair back into a bun and pulls up his shirt sleeves revealing the corded muscles of his forearms and a swathe of inked skin. He looks like he's getting ready to go into battle. And maybe he is.

 

He starts telling Karen about the cakes… in great detail. He lists ingredients and possible allergens, preparation time. He even names the books that provided the inspiration.

 

For his part, Frank finds it amusing how easily he's discounted. Not for the first time he wonders what they look like to the outside world, to the people who don't know he's the Punisher and she's the woman he calls ma'am. If maybe they just look like any other couple. Her, the statuesque blonde that everyone knows could have done so much better and him, the brooding presence at her back with nothing but rage to offer the world and tenderness to offer her.

 

He wonders if Pastry Hozier has even considered the possibility they're together or if he's just ignoring that while he tries to impress a pretty lady.

 

She does make some things easy to forget. She makes them easy to ignore too.

 

Things a man like him shouldn't ever ignore.

 

But right now there's nothing he needs to do and nowhere he needs to be so he lets this play out in front of him, watches how her interest turns from genuine to feigned, how her questions dry up and Pastry Hozier finds himself trying to fill up the looming silences.And then, of course, the disappointment that crosses his features when he sees her enthusiasm has gone and she turns pointedly to Frank with a question in her eyes.

 

Those goddamn eyes.

 

_Fuck you Karen Page for those fucking eyes._

 

“Know what you want?” he asks.

 

And he's not given to vanity. He really isn't. He's all but accepted that whatever dark feelings he has for her are not returned, not in any way that counts. And yet… and yet he swears he sees something in her eyes. It's a shadow, a flicker of the same thing he saw when she was in his bed and he was in her body. The same thing he saw when she was kissing him like he was the only man in the world worth kissing.

 

And when she speaks her voice is husky.

 

“Yeah. I know.”

 

It feels heavier than it should.

 

She holds his gaze for a second longer, a second that feels like a million years - maybe more - and then she touches his arm again, fingers biting into his muscle as she points absently at some or other chocolate and hazelnut concoction that he's pretty sure she hadn’t noticed until a second ago.

 

He swallows and his throat is paper dry.

 

_Damn you Karen Page. Goddamn you._

 

“One of those and an apple pie,” he says to Pastry Hozier. “Black coffee and a latte. All to go.”

 

She hasn't let go of him and he pats her fingers gently, forces himself not to take her hand as she drops it from his arm and he moves to the counter.

 

He knows she's watching him. He wonders why - if maybe the reality of being out with him in the dead hours of the night has hit home, if she wants to call it quits and dial this all down, reign it in. Or if she realises - like he did - that they're doing this all backwards. Fuck first and then fall apart. Fuck first and then make friends. Fuck first and then go out on what can only be called a date. He wonders if she's thinking about where they've come from. He hopes she isn't thinking about where they're going to.

 

He waits while their coffee is being made and the pastries put into a box. He pays cash and as he hands over some notes he feels her coming up behind him. She doesn't touch him but she’s close enough that he can smell her perfume and feel the heat coming off her skin.

 

He hates how familiar it feels. He loves it too.

 

Pastry Hozier looks resigned as he gives Frank his change and watches Karen pick up their coffee and head towards the door.

 

_Yeah buddy, I know. It doesn't get any easier. She fucks you up and she's fucking relentless. Get out before you're too far gone. Before you've fallen too deep._

 

“Thanks,” he says picking up the box and stuffing his wallet in his pocket.

 

“Come back soon,” Pastry Hozier’s voice is a little too happy, a little too forced and Frank knows he's not talking to him. But Karen's already at the door and he's behind her and they don't look back as he touches her elbow and steers her out into the night.

 

~~~

 

“You gotta learn to control that,” he says as they get into the truck.

 

“What's that?”

 

“The way you break hearts.”

 

She frowns at him as he starts the engine.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Pat-a-cake Baker's Man back there.”

 

Even in the dim light he can see her roll her eyes.

 

“Yeah sure.”

 

“It's true,” he pulls out onto the road, heads toward the river. “Man has it bad.”

 

Like Murdock. Like Nelson.

 

_Like me. So much like me._

 

She shakes her head and looks out the window and he's grateful she doesn't try to continue the conversation. It was already too raw, hitting a little too close to home.

 

She doesn't ask where they're going and he doesn't tell her. There's something both frightening and familiar about the control she's handed over to him, the way she's trusting him.

 

He makes himself a promise not to break it. Not now. Not ever. And if that means this is what they've become, if this is where they're going he’ll accept it. He'll welcome it.

 

But these thoughts are too dark and too deep and it's such a beautiful night, like something out of a Van Gogh painting and he doesn't want to ruin it with his rage and his longing … his guilt that tears away at him every single day.

 

She feels it too because suddenly she's fiddling with the radio, looking to fill the silence, and he's not even embarrassed when REO Speedwagon bursts through the speakers.

 

And maybe it's a good thing, as far as any definition of good can be when it comes to Seventies and Eighties poodle pop.

 

She gives him a look that's half exasperated and half indulgent and he thinks she’ll change it, look for something a little more current, a little less cheesy, but she doesn't.

 

Instead she shifts in her seat, chuckles to herself and then proceeds to blindside him and sing along, loud and clear and horribly overdramatic.

 

“ _And though I know all about those mennnn, still I don't re-mem-burrrr_ _  
_ _'Cause it was us, bay-beh, way before themmmm, and we're still togetherrrr._

 

“ _And I meant every word I said.  
When I said that love you I meant that I love you foreverrrr_.”

 

And he can't help it, he bursts out laughing. It's a decidedly unfamiliar sensation, one he's pretty sure he's forgotten, one he never thought he’d need to remember. But it's there and bubbling out of his chest into his throat, out into the world.

 

He doesn't even have the urge to force it back down.

 

And she's got the goofiest fucking grin on her face.

 

“ _And I'm gonna keep on loving yooooooou  
__Cause it's the only thing I wanna doooooooo..._ ”

 

“You know this song?”

 

“Who doesn't?” she takes a sip of her coffee. “One of my friends’ dad was a huge fan. He always played them.”

 

“You saying I'm like your friend’s dad?”

 

She shrugs dramatically and purses her lips, pointedly doesn't answer his question.

 

“ _I don't wanna sleep,  
I just wanna keep on lovin’ yooooooou_.”

 

He almost misses the turn to the river and when he looks at her she’s trying so hard not to smile that he laughs again, long and loud.

 

He’s the fucking Punisher, Scourge of Hell’s Kitchen and he's got a goddamn arsenal hidden under the floor of his truck and a .45 strapped to his waist. And then he has Karen Page next to him, singing her heart out and shattering him into a million pieces. 

 

It's probably the most perfect moment he's had since the night he took her to bed. Maybe even more because the anguish isn't there, the need and the desperation closed behind some door which he knows is straining to open but is somehow still holding up.

 

He doesn't know for how long though.

 

She breaks everything eventually.

 

He does too.

 

“We going to the river?” she asks and he can still hear the giggle in her voice.

 

“You wanna go home rather?”

 

She shakes her head. It makes him happier than it should.

 

He parks down a side road, grabs the pastries off the seat between them and heads around the truck to help her while she manoeuvres herself onto the ground trying not to spill the coffee.

 

There's a moment he catches himself staring at her and then another when he squeezes her hip as he leans past her to shut the door.

 

She doesn't seem to notice and if she did, she doesn't say anything.

 

Maybe her head’s messed up too. He's pretty sure it is.

 

They cross the road, walk the rest of the block to the river. It's a nice little spot, quiet and secluded at this ungodly hour, the restaurants and shops dotting the promenade all closed up for the night.

 

And again it's just them. And if he can shut out the sound of the traffic, he can almost believe it's _only_ them. Only them, alone in the world.

 

She walks slightly ahead of him, hair bouncing against her shoulders, hips swaying in a way he knows is wholly unintentional, which just makes it more enticing.

 

_God, she has no fucking right. She never fucking did._

 

He has no idea how he's going to get through the rest of the night, no idea why he was so goddamn stupid and let this happen. Why in his own fucked up way he asked her out on a date and now she's here and he's here and so are the stars and the moon and the gentle lapping of the Hudson. How he even thought this was a remotely okay idea.

 

How somehow she did too.

 

She sits down on a lonely bench, scoots to the side to make room for him and the pastries and when he's got himself sitting too she hands him his coffee, takes another sip of hers.

 

For a while they don't speak. She still has a small satisfied smile on her face and he thinks it might be because she got him to laugh. He's pretty sure it is. She's sweet like that.

 

They eat. They watch the lights, the stars, the boats and yachts cruising down the river, and the gulls, still restless, caw loudly above them.

 

When he takes away the fact that the love of his life is gone and his children are dead, the fact that he's trying to kill the world back into making sense and failing, the fact that this woman beside him isn't his and never will be even if once upon a time she was, it's actually damn near perfect.

 

For him it's a start. It might be an end too.

 

“Wanna taste? It's really good.”

 

It takes him a second to understand what she means. But then she's holding out her pastry to him and he's about to tell her no, he's not much inclined towards the sweeter things in life, when the light catches her eyes again and he lets the lie die on his tongue.

 

So he takes it from her and it's sticky and gooey and he's sure he has chocolate smeared all over his face after the first bite.

 

But she's right. It is good. It's wonderful in fact. Much much better than his apple pie - the apple pie she nonchalantly takes out of his hand and bites into.

 

Again. Again this is fucked up and dangerous. Because he's fucked up and she's dangerous or maybe it's the other way around.

 

He thinks it might be. He also thinks that maybe he thinks too much.

 

“Mine is better,” she says and he knows she's talking about the pastry but it doesn't matter because it's a universal truth anyway. Hers is better. _She_ is better.

 

No one in this whole fucking world comes close.

 

He hands the pastry back to her, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

 

“Yeah I have order envy,” he says.

 

She nods.

 

“Seems so, you're saving half of it for later in your damn beard.”

 

He reaches up again to scrub a hand across his face but she stops him, fingers pressing into the flesh of his bicep.

 

“Here,” she says, pulling a tissue out of her purse.

 

He knows what she's going to do before she does it. He _knows_. And he has every opportunity in the world to stop it. He could move away, take the tissue out of her hands, tell her he’s got it and wipe his mouth again.

 

He does none of these things, even though he should.

 

He lets her move in close so that she's all but sitting inside the curve of his body, their knees touching and all he’d need to do is move his arm a fraction of an inch and it would be around her shoulders.

 

But he doesn't. Because this is so fucking messed up already and she's only making it worse even as she makes it better.

 

She smells of something citrusy. A gentle orange blossom flavour that fills him up faster than it should. And then there's the rich dark scent of chocolate and coffee, and the even richer smell of her skin under that.

 

There's no escape.

 

He isn't looking for one either.

 

She dabs at the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his jaw and he's pretty sure he hasn't got chocolate there. He also doesn't care.

 

He catches himself watching her lips, full and pink and slightly parted and he remembers how it felt when she pressed kisses into his shoulders, his throat, his chest. Lower. Lower until he made a remarkably half-hearted attempt to stop her and she said she would if he wanted, but he could trust her if he changed his mind.

 

So he did. And she did. And he doesn't remember all too much after that except the feeling of slowly going out of his mind and how she caught him when he did.

 

He tries not to think about that. He tries not to think of the whole night but that part most of all.

 

And God, oh god, especially not now. Not while her breath is so gentle on his face and all he wants to do is put his mouth to hers, taste the chocolate on her tongue as he pushes her back into the hard slats of the bench, hikes her legs over his hips.

 

“There,” she says softly, crumpling the tissue up and stuffing it into her pocket.

 

“Thanks,” he says and his throat feels like sandpaper and his voice is nothing more than a low whisper.

 

She looks at him for a second and then she bites her lip, glances away.

 

He wonders if she's figuring this out. If she's finally opened a little window into his head and had a glimpse of his thoughts. If she's only just realised hers are the same … If they even are.

 

But then she shrugs and picks up her coffee, takes a long sip and stands, heads over to the railing to stare at the river.

 

He's not sure it wasn't a move to create distance - to get away from him and them and whatever it is that is coming to a not so low simmer between them - but then she glances back at him and he takes it as an indication to join her.

 

So he does.

 

The wind is up and it's whipping at her hair as he approaches, her cardigan flapping around her like a pair of white wings. She looks almost luminous, tinged in gold and silver by the moonlight.

 

He thinks he might break in half.

 

He's not much of a believer anymore. When you lose your family, your faith follows shortly after. But he remembers the Bible, he remembers his priest and his studies and the description of angels so far removed from the benevolent golden beings people lap up as truth today. He remembers them being terrible and frightening, sending beggars and kings alike running and cowering in fear.

 

He looks at her again and he knows what she is. She's both. She's that perfect mix of the terrifying and the benevolent. She's everything.

 

And she's nothing short of indescribably beautiful. Simmering with goodness.

 

_Oh my god Karen Page. What have you done?_

 

_What have I done?_

 

She turns to him, flashes a small smile that makes his knees weaker than they already are and then rests her arms on the railing. Sighs.

 

“So quiet,” she says. “Wish it could always be like this. Just like this.”

 

He does too. Him. Her. The night.

 

Again he wants to take her and get into the car, just keep driving until the road ends. Make that house. Make that life. Keep her safe.

 

Keep _this_ safe.

 

“Thank you for helping me,” she says and she doesn't look at him. “For… for everything.”

 

“Ain't nothing,” he says taking a swig of his coffee. “I just know some people who can find shit.”

 

She nods, stares at her paper cup, at the river below and he can see the starlight reflected off its surface back into her eyes.

 

“I didn't just mean that,” she says softly. “I meant everything else too.”

 

Her words die in the wind and for a moment nothing happens.

 

And then it feels like everything does.

 

He's in love with her. The realisation comes fast, unexpectedly, and for a second he can’t breathe and he has to grab the railing for support, force himself to concentrate on the water and the night, the little blue and red lights of police cruisers from across the river.

 

It's too much and it's too wrong.

 

“You don't judge me. You don’t try and hide me away…”

 

And all he wants is for her to stop. To just shut the fuck up and stop. He's not good for her and she's a disaster for him and maybe, despite everything he told her, Murdock _is_  what she needs. Someone who’ll put her on a fucking pedestal and leave her there. Not let the world touch her or hurt her.

 

But she's still talking and he's still dying and it's such a fucking mess and he's shaking so much that he drops his coffee cup, watches as it bounces off the concrete river bank and splashes into the black water.

 

“You alright?” she asks turning to him.

 

_No I'm not fucking alright. Not by a fucking long shot. And it's all your goddamn fault._

 

“Frank?”

 

“Yeah yeah, I'm fine.”

 

He thinks this might be the first time he's ever lied to her. Except it isn't. The first time he lied to her was when he sat on the edge of his bed and told her it was wrong what they did and they couldn’t let it happen again.

 

And then it did happen again and it was like God himself was showing him he was a liar and making him atone.

 

No Hail Marys, no good works. His penance was Karen Page.

 

It wasn't penance at all.

 

“You sure?”

 

_No, I'm not fucking sure about anything anymore._

 

Except that.

 

Except that he loves her.

 

And that climbs into his bones, seeps into his blood like an infection that leaves him feverish and trembling, heating him from the inside out and threatening to spew out of him like lava out of a volcano.

 

It wasn't that he didn't know. It wasn't that he was too stupid to figure it out. It wasn't that he somehow missed it. But he'd put it away, hidden it. Tried to tell himself that he loved her the same way you love a friend in a time of desperate need and that the night they spent together was just because sometimes those feelings get jumbled up. Sometimes you need a warm body and a gentle touch. And she's a pretty girl and she's kind and sweet and the circumstances just wove together to create the situation it did.

 

He told himself that. He might have even believed it sometimes.

 

But not now.

 

“Frank?” she says again, touching his shoulder and somehow she's moved into his space, her scent heady and intoxicating and when the wind whips her hair he sees that spot behind her ear, the one that makes her go still and limp. He kissed it and scraped his teeth along it so many times and he smiled at her little loose giggles, her breathy sighs, when he did.

 

He doesn't want to but he lets go of the railing, turns to her. She's luminous again, silver and gold and cold hard porcelain.

 

An nightmare. A dream. An angel.

 

The real devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

 

He shouldn't let himself but he reaches out, touches her jaw. Her skin is cold but he can feel her pulse jumping underneath his fingertips and then a sudden explosion of blooming heat that seems to radiate outwards from the place where they're touching.

 

To think that Red could have had this and threw it away. To think that _he_ had this and did the same damn thing.

 

She watches him and her face is unreadable but she's not pulling away. She's not doing anything other than let him look at her, let him fall faster and harder than he already has.

 

She's the kind of woman a man gets lost in.

 

And he's already lost.

 

He runs his thumb over her lips. They're wet and plump and he knows they taste sweet.

 

The wind blows again, tossing her hair over his hand, strands sliding between his fingers. It's soft, so soft and he remembers tugging at it so he could kiss her and then burying his face in it as he came.

 

_To have that again…_

 

“Karen,” he whispers and it sounds like a promise and in many ways it is.

 

He's committed even if he hasn't said it. He's hers. And he's been looking to be somebody's for so long now.

 

“Karen, I want…”

 

Her eyes widen and he doesn't know if it's because she thinks he's going to kiss her, start this sorry mess all over again or if it's because she gets it and everything that it means.

 

But it's not to be. He knew that before they even started.

 

“Frank, I…” there might be a warning in her voice and it's all he needs and he snaps his hand back, stuffs it in his pocket.

 

Let it crash. Let it burn. It's safer than everything else anyway.

 

“Yeah,” he says turning away and back to the river. “I know.”

 

“No. No you don't. I didn't mean…”

 

And then he can hear some faint voices and they both look across the road where there's a group of rowdy teenagers, drunk and yelling obscenities, one pretending to hump a street lamp.

 

And whatever moment they had is gone and he doesn't know if he should be sad or relieved.

 

“Come on,” he says. “I'll take you home.”

 

~~~

 

The drive back is as quiet as the streets. No laughing, no singing, no REO Speedwagon. He’d say that was a good thing but it's not.

 

She leans her head against the cool glass of his window but despite her calm demeanour her knuckles are white and she's fidgeting.

 

He wonders what he's done, how badly fucked up this is now. They went from never talking about that night to nearly recreating it and they both should know better.

 

He blames her as much as he blames himself.

 

This was a mistake. This was such a huge goddamn mistake. Everything they've ever done since the moment he took her back to his place to get her cleaned up and then took her into his bed has been a mistake. And each mistake has been making the previous ones worse.

 

He needs to go back to what he knows. He needs to hunt and he needs to hurt. He needs to pull the punisher out from beneath the layers of Frank Castle again. Find that menace, that rage.

 

And maybe then he can forget.

 

He stops outside her apartment block, doesn't turn off the engine and hopes that's indication enough of his intentions.

 

“You don’t wanna come in?” she asks.

 

“I don't think I should.”

 

“I wish you would,” she says. It's not an invitation. Not of that kind anyway. She isn't offering or asking for anything more than his company. Friendship.

 

It's also something else. It’s a plea. It's begging. She's asking him to show her they're still okay. They're still friends. That it doesn't need to be weird even if they just made it so it was.

 

He can't give that to her. It's the one thing he won't even try to do.

 

He touches a lock of her hair, runs his hand along it and follows the curve.

 

He needs to be strong. For both of them.

 

“I can't.”

 

He doesn't think he's ever been more honest with her.

 

“It doesn't have to be…”

 

“No. It does.”

 

Later he'll wish he let her finish her thought, let her work it out, but now he just watches her nod.

 

“Thanks,” she says and she could be thanking him for any number of things and he doesn't want to ask which.

 

And then she squeezes his hand and she's gone.

 

He waits until the door to the block swings shut behind her and he sees her light come on and then he goes to hunt.

 

It doesn't take one ounce of the hurt away.

 

~~~

 

_He breaks her heart._

 

_He looks her over for a long time, asks her about bruises and cuts. Wounds. She promises him she's fine and he doesn't believe her._

 

_There's no reason he should. She lied to him once. She could do it again._

 

_She tells him she's sorry, whispers it to him as they stand there in the shadow of the emergency stairs, and he asks her what for._

 

What I said. I didn't mean it.

 

_He cocks his head, narrows his eyes._

 

Yeah _, he says._ Yeah you did.

 

_She has nothing to say to that. She doesn't have the energy to fight it. Doesn't think she deserves the privilege of fighting it either. She hurt him. She broke his already shattered heart. She's cruel beyond comprehension._

 

_And she has no right. She has no fucking right._

 

_Fighting it only makes it worse._

 

_All she has is contrition. Penance. And he won't give her that either._

 

_He tells her it's fine. He’s wrong but he isn't lying. In his eyes everything she does is good. Because in his eyes he's not worthy and whatever she's willing to give him is better than nothing._

 

_The attack dog that once thought it was a pet._

 

_And then he flashes her a rueful smile and his eyes are glistening with tears._

 

You take care ma’am. You take care.

 

_He touches her jaw like he did once before, thumb over her lips._

 

_He's always had a thing about touching her. She's always had a thing about letting him._

 

_And then he's moving away towards the steps, taking the handrail and gripping it until his knuckles turn white._

 

Frank _, she says and he looks back at her. Sad. Expectant. Lost._

 

Frank stay, please.

 

 _He shakes his head._ I can’t _._

 

_He breaks her heart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is _Keep on Loving You_ by REO Speedwagon - it's as bad as Karen makes it sound.


	4. And are you losing sleep tonight like I am?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. So I am sorry this took a bit longer than it should have. It kind of threw me off and decided it needed to be six chapters and not five (this was after it was initially supposed to be three chapters). I could have combined this one and the next one I guess, but it really felt clumsy so this just seemed smoother.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Just FYI, I am still writing Be My Saviour - it's just taking a bit longer because of a couple of reasons which I don't really want to get into right now. But it will be updated in the next little while.
> 
> Thanks for all your support with this silly story.

_She remembers where she was a year ago._

 

_No, it’s not exact. The dates don’t match up completely but it’s close enough._

 

_It was always going to come down to this anyway. Always._

 

_And she's just so tired. So tired of worrying and waiting. So tired of pretending._

 

_Matt’s still asleep and she heads to the tiny bathroom in the passageway outside his ward. The light is too bright and too stark and she looks like a corpse in the tiny cracked mirror. She’s haggard and pale with black bags under her eyes and mascara running down her cheeks. Her lipstick is a faint red smear that looks more like a bruise._

 

_She doesn’t care about any of that._

 

_The tap is leaking a little and she splashes water on her face and then turns it off firmly, grabs some paper towels to dry off._

 

_She stands there for a few minutes looking at the sickly green of the tiles, the grouting which needs to be scrubbed. She’s guessing that’s not really a high priority right now, what with the explosions and the constant stream of wounded coming in through the hospital doors. Unlike the impending heartache she’s about to cause, dirty grouting is tomorrow's problem. It’s also someone else’s._

 

_She turns back to her reflection and wonders where she's going to find the right words. Words that are so kind in their delivery but so cruel in their implications. She doesn't want to hurt him but she doesn't want to lie either. They can give each other that at least, that small truth even when they've hidden much bigger ones._

 

_He's Daredevil. She's murdered people. Maybe they need to stop pretending they can be together and instead just be who they are._

 

_But that’s not the truth of it either. She can come up with reasons in her head as to why and how they’ll never work and they’ll all be valid. Every last one. But the real reason - the core of it - is Frank. It’s always Frank._

 

_She fell in love. It’s what she does. She fell in love and she’s not even sure when she did it. It wasn’t the night he took her to bed. It was before that. Way before that. Sometime during that greyness when Hell’s Kitchen trembled in the Punisher’s wake and she found a way to not be afraid._

 

_She found a way to thrive._

 

_It doesn’t matter. None of it does. The times, the places. That’s all bullshit. What matters now is setting things straight, making it right._

 

_She needs to be honest with both of them. She needs to be honest with herself._

 

_And she remembers where she was a year ago._

 

~~~

 

She breaks his heart. He doesn't even realise it in the moment she does it. No, it takes a little thinking, a little mulling over, to figure out when everything went to shit before he actually fully understands the magnitude of what happened. Sometimes anger can hide what's really going on. Most of the time, with him, it's an excuse to.

 

But he realises it. He does. He's not slow. He's not stupid either. It isn't like he doesn't know how this works. It isn't like he's never hurt before; it isn’t like he’s never got hurt back. As much as he loved Maria they weren't perfect.

 

But he never wanted perfect anyway.

 

So he knows how a broken heart feels, accepts that this is the reason behind the hurt and the rage, the nastiness, the reason he ran away and then ran away a second time. He knows. And, when he wonders how it could have happened - how he fucked up so badly that Karen Page breaking his heart was even a possibility - he doesn't have to search for the answer.

 

It's right in front of him sitting there and gloating like an evil little devil covered in blood and gunshot residue.

 

The answer is easy.

 

He broke her heart first.

 

~~~

 

He doesn't go back to her apartment after the night at the river. Something about being in her space - becoming _part_ of her space - is just too terrifying to contemplate. It's too much. Too much anger and too much hurt. Too much guilt. Too many memories waiting to be made. And he hasn't found a way to rid himself of the ones he already has.

 

It would happen again. There’s no doubt in his mind. It would be as easy as falling down. Them. The bed. The sheets kicked to the floor and their clothes strewn across her apartment. The taste of her filling him up like some kind of wonderful poison he can't say no to.

 

He knows it. He's pretty sure she does too.

 

They've become too intimate and no, he doesn't just mean the fact that he’s taken her to bed and she’s taken him right back. It's both more and less than that. He _gets_ her. She gets him. And that frightens him more than any night they could have ever shared.

 

He knows he should end it all, cut her off and go cold turkey but he can’t do that either. So instead he’s changed the tone of their meetings.

 

He meets her now in public places, waits for her on the street outside her offices, calls to her as she walks past, her black heels clicking on the pavement, her coat swishing behind her.

 

The first time - only a week and a half after the river and the pastries and his hand on her face - it surprised her. He could see by the look in her eyes that she thought it was about something else, that something urgent had happened and he was reaching out. That he needed her.

 

What she didn't know was that he did. He always did. He always will.

 

He's also not sure he’ll ever forget the disappointment in her eyes when she realised it was a substitute for their late nights and this was just going to be how they did things now.

 

Every time she looks at him like he's breaking her heart.

 

He looks at her in much the same way.

 

Ultimately he's come to accept he's weak and he's an asshole and he's not quite ready to just abandon this or leave well enough alone… for any given definition of “well enough”.

 

Today though…  today they’re meeting in a small coffee shop with bright red curtains and dark wood floors. Today is different. Because today he has something to tell her that has nothing to do with Stuttafords or ponzi schemes. Nothing to do with money laundering or whatever bullshit charities people's pensions are being hidden away in.

 

Today he gets to rip his heart out and make her watch while he stamps on it in front of her. Today he gets to give them both what they need, if not what they want. Today he gets to lose her even though he never really had her … except once, in a memory he's sometimes not convinced is his own, when he did.

 

Somewhere he wonders if this is some glorious act of self-immolation, or if he's merely desperate to hurt himself before she gets another chance. He doesn't know when it comes to her anymore. She turns his world upside down and inside out without lifting a finger.

 

He glances out of the cafe window, fiddling with a packet of sugar he has no intention of putting in his coffee. He can see her coming down the road towards him, her hair long and loose and shining like cornsilk in the last of the autumn sunlight. She's wearing a brick-red dress - the same shade as Murdock’s suit - and long tan suede boots that come up to her knees, a coat to fend off the sudden autumn chill.

 

She looks beautiful. She always does.

 

 _I love you,_ he thinks. _I do._

 

It doesn't come as a surprise. He knew it already even if he didn't ever truly sit down and think about it.

 

It doesn't matter. It never did. It never will.

 

He takes a sip of his coffee. He imagines Maria sitting opposite him and silently judging him.

 

The door to the shop swings open and Karen steps inside, scans the tables and spots him almost instantly. He guesses he never could hide from her. Guesses he didn't want to either.

 

She gives him a tight smile, pulls her gloves and coat off as she heads over, shoves everything into the booth before sliding in herself.

 

“Frank,” she says softly.

 

“Ma'am.”

 

For a second he just looks at her. No matter the circumstances, it’s always so good to see her. Her golden hair that he buried his face in, her blue eyes that he drowned in. Those gentle pale fingers that brought him to the edge and caught him as he tipped over and fell, all his pieces shattering as he did.

 

It meant something. He knows this.

 

It also doesn't matter that it did.

 

The waitress comes over and offers coffee. Karen asks for it straight out the pot, black and bitter and he wonders when she started drinking it like that; when she started preferring the edge over smooth lines of a latte. He wonders if maybe it's always been this way and he's just never noticed.

 

“You look well,” she says.

 

No he doesn't. He might not have any cuts or bruises, any open wounds, but he's not well. He's not well by a long shot.

 

“I was surprised when you called,” she continues and he cocks his head, takes a sip of his coffee. “I'm glad you did.”

 

And this is horrible. This is horrible because despite her guarded words, she can't hide the hope in them. Hope for her. Hope for them. And more than anything hope for him. And Karen Page isn't ordinarily given to too much hope.

 

But neither is he and part of him wonders if this is where it all goes wrong. After all he shouldn't be giving anyone hope, no matter how abstract or nebulous. It's not what he does and he can't help but feel that if he tried he'd doom them all. Most of all himself.

 

“So,” she says glancing around. “You're not hiding in the shadows outside my building. It must be a special occasion.You have anything for me?”

 

Straight. To the point. Somewhat brutal. Just like her.

 

His lips quirk into a smile.

 

“Yeah.”

 

He hands over a plain brown envelope.

 

“They have two general ledgers for the last six months. They paint very different pictures about the financial position of the company,” he drops the bag of sugar, takes a sip of his coffee. “It's pretty easy to figure out which is the one going to the IRS and which isn’t.”

 

For a second she forgets herself and when she looks at him her eyes are shining and the smile on her face hits him right in the diaphragm, leaves him breathless.

 

“Oh my god Frank,” she says. “Thank you! How did you even get this?”

 

Despite himself he smiles too.

 

“I know a guy.”

 

He does. In fact that's why he's here. That's why he's about to destroy every fucking thing that makes life worth living right now.

 

“Yeah,” she says opening the envelope and peeking inside. “You sure do.”

 

“There's also a flash drive in there with a recording from one of their board meetings. I don't know if you're gonna find anything useful on it but it's worth a shot.”

 

“Thank you,” she says again. “Honestly, I couldn't have done this without you.”

 

“Sure you could.”

 

It's true. He has no doubt. There's pretty much nothing Karen Page can't do. She's spent the last year of his life showing him that.

 

He has a cracked heart bleeding all over the goddamn ground to prove it.

 

“This could be it,” she says and absently she puts her hand on his arm just below his elbow and squeezes. And Jesus fucking Christ but it feels so good. Jesus fucking Christ he's missed this. Missed them and the way they are.

 

And even though the alarm bells are sounding in his brain and everything inside him is telling him not to, he puts his free hand over hers, holds it there.

 

She stiffens briefly, so briefly he wouldn't notice if he wasn't waiting for it, but then just as quickly she relaxes, squeezes his arm again.

 

“Karen, I…”

 

“Do you wanna…?”

 

They both speak at once and then stop at the same time.

 

“Sorry,” she says. “Please.”

 

And she looks happier than he's seen her in weeks, almost as happy as she was when she sat next him singing along to REO Speedwagon and he thought about just driving until the road ended. Almost.

 

He can't take it away from her. Or them. Not yet at least. He won't. They can have a few extra minutes, whatever stolen seconds the universe let's them keep.

 

So he shouldn't but he does. And she shouldn't but she does too.

 

“No,” he says. “You first. Please.”

 

She smiles, looks down at her coffee.

 

“I know…” she trails off.

 

“Know what?”

 

_C'mon Karen. Be fearless. Be who I know you are._

 

“I know things have been … strange between us…”

 

He doesn't say anything but part of him muses at the phrasing, the way she seems to think this strangeness - the discomfort - is new. Truth is he can't think of a time when things weren't strange between them. They've always been a little dark, a little fraught. He didn't need to take her to bed for that to happen.

 

But he did. He did. And now they're both paying the price.

 

_I love you. I do. And it doesn't matter at all._

 

“... I miss you,” she says and she glances out the window but her hand is still warm on his arm. “I miss you and it's only as strange as we make it…”

 

_C'mon Karen. You're a smart girl. You know that ain't true._

 

“... And we figured so much of this out together and we work so well together…” she trails off.

 

“Karen…”

 

But she interrupts.

 

“Come over tonight,” she says it like she's been holding it inside too long, like it's a relief to even form the words. “Come over and go through this with me. Just like we used to. Not even like before, but when we first met, when I helped you remember…”

 

No, not this. Dear God, anything but this. She's trying to erase it. Trying to work backwards to a place where they aren’t who they are, to a time when they hadn't had their night and all the nights after that.

 

_No Karen Page. No, you don't get that. You don't get to do that. Neither of us do._

 

She’s still talking and he's saying her name. He doesn't know for how long he's been doing it. He vaguely recalls starting softly - really softly - and letting it work up to something louder.

 

And now when he says it, hard and fast, it shuts her up like he's flicked a switch and her mouth snaps shut.

 

For a moment they just look at each other and he remembers what it was like to get lost in her eyes, to see the surprise in them as he made her come, to see the gleam in them as she did the same for him.

 

He hates them for crossing that line. He hates them both for turning them into this.

 

He also loves her. These things don’t seem incompatible at all.

 

“Sorry,” she whispers.

 

“No,” he says. “Don't be.”

 

It's not her. None of this is her. He's the one at fault. He shouldn't have given her the chance. He should have spoken first because now his resolve is crumbling. Now he's picturing more late nights and early mornings, pastries at the river and handsome bakers falling over themselves for her. He's wondering what it would be like to kiss her again, taste her lips and tell her that nothing she's done matters because he loves her and when he loves someone it's forever. He's wondering if ending up tangled between her limbs, his body inside hers, is such a bad thing and he can't think of one good reason it is. He's wondering things a man who has chosen the life he has should never wonder.

 

“I'm going away,” he says.

 

Three little words. Three little words with the weight of the world behind them.

 

She leaves a cold patch on his arm as she moves her hand off him, grips the edge of the table, and looks at him long and hard. He hates it when she does this. He hates how she can flay him with a look, make him feel like he’s the worst man in the world.

 

He thought it would be easy once it was out in the open, that she'd take the lead and let him coast along. He's an idiot. He knows Karen Page better than that.

 

“When?” she asks and he almost misses the tremor in her voice.

 

Almost.

 

“Tomorrow,” and there's no way she misses the one in his.

 

She looks away, down at her knuckles which are turning white.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

He swallows, forces himself to watch her, the golden crown of her head, the slender line of her neck and that place he once scraped his teeth along and made her shiver and shake.

 

He takes a sip of his coffee, puts the mug down.

 

“Texas,” he says and his voice sounds almost normal.

 

“Texas,” she repeats like she's trying the word out.

 

He's not sure how much he wants to tell her. It isn't a holiday, it's not some secret yearning to don a Stetson and ride around like some dumbass trigger happy cowboy. No, like all his work it's likely to be wet. Bloody. There'll be broken bones and gunshots. Depending on how bad things get there could be more. He wants to protect her from that, he doesn't want her to know what he does.

 

And yet… and yet somehow he's telling her anyway. And he realises that it's because he doesn't want her to think it has anything to do with her even though it has everything to do with her.

 

“A buddy of mine…,” he starts and she looks up at him and for a second he forgets what he's saying.

 

Her face is unreadable. There are no tears, not even the hint of red in her eyes, and her jaw is relaxed, and he can't decide if she's just really good at faking or if all she really does feel is mild curiosity.

 

Maybe she's lying to him. Maybe she isn't.

 

He has no idea how that makes him feel.

 

“A buddy of mine, Curtis… the one that dug up all that crap...” he glances at the envelope and she nods. “His niece went missing. She’s only twelve.”

 

“Frank, that's terrible.”

 

Softer again and it makes it easier to move, to talk.

 

“Yeah… they had some trouble with her. She fell in with a bad crowd. She was in a bad way but…” he pauses because he knows he’s talking himself into a dead end. “But she's back with her mother now.”

 

She watches him over the rim of her coffee mug and he feels judged. Caught out. Which he guesses he is.

 

He knows what she's going to say, what she's going to ask, why she's giving him a look that's both exasperated and disappointed, so he rushes to speak first and he wishes he didn't feel this kind of need to please her, to be good to her.

 

To not lie to her.

 

“He thinks it goes much deeper than one little girl Karen,” he says. “He wants me to take them out. All of them. Every last one.” He wraps his hands around his coffee mug and glances out the window. “I said I'd do it.”

 

She doesn't even flinch. She doesn't even seem shocked and he wonders how it came to this. How he found someone in this shithole that now passes for his life who takes this aspect of him in her stride.

 

At the same time though she's studying him. Her jaw is tight and her eyes are narrow and he feels like she's assessing him for deceit, half truths. Lies.

 

She won't find them though. It's all true. Every goddamn word of it is true. It's also true that when he heard about the situation his first thought was about how he could use this as a chance to get away from her. To stop seeing the disappointment in her eyes every time he walked away. To take the final step in this process of weaning himself off Karen Page.

 

He should have known it was futile. Looking at her now he can't believe he didn't.

 

But she seems willing to let that slide for the moment, although he's pretty sure she won't let it go for long.

 

“When will you be back?” she asks and he shrugs.

 

“Depends on how long it takes.”

 

That's also true. Curits’ always been thorough and methodical. He takes his time to get things right and he doesn't let rage or impatience get the better of him. He said he was looking into things, sifting through the shit to just find more and more shit. That's why he needed help, that's why Frank fucking owes him after all the crap he's helped him uncover for that leggy blonde he's taken a shine to.

 

Truth is Frank would have done it anyway, whether he wanted the chance to get away from the leggy blonde or not. It's about kids and scumbags and what good is he - what good is his bloodlust - if he can't use it when he really needs to?

 

He glances back at Karen and she purses her lips and takes another sip of her coffee.

 

It occurs to him that he's partly hoping she’ll try and change his mind. It also occurs to him that he's a massive asshole for wanting that. It's not her job, it's not her responsibility and he has no right to even think it. She’ll never give it to him anyway. She doesn't give him things he doesn't deserve. And, even when she does, even when she gives him a night like she did, he has to pay for it after in blood and sweat and tears. She's vicious and it doesn’t matter that she doesn't know it. She's that devil hiding behind the veneer of an angel. And he thinks that's why he loves her.

 

_My old lady, she could tear my heart out and stamp on it, feed that shit to a dog._

 

He has a type. He can't deny it.

 

All the same, he just wants a reason to come back. He just wants to know someone is waiting for him.

 

“Come on Frank,” she says. “Are we talking a week? A month?”

 

_Ever?_

 

She doesn't have to say it. He can hear it in her voice.

 

_No Karen Page, I don't know where I'm gonna be a year from now. I don't even know where I'm going to be a few weeks from now. But it'll be away from you._

 

Away from _this_.

 

“I don't know,” he says again and he's aware of how ridiculous this all sounds. She knows him. She knows how precise he is, how he doesn't leave shit to chance and maybes. It's ludicrous that he'd be so nonchalant about timing, so vague about himself and his work. And yet he is. He is because this isn't about criminals and punishing. This isn't about saving little girls and making people pay.

 

“You don't know,” she repeats and her voice is disbelieving and exasperated.

 

“No.”

 

It's not a lie but it may as well be.

 

She nods, sips her coffee again. He can see a cracked brown leaf caught in her hair that she hasn't noticed and he almost, _almost_ , puts his hand up to take it out.

 

“Is it dangerous?” she asks.

 

_Not as dangerous as staying here. Staying with you. Not as dangerous as what we did._

 

He shrugs, picks up the packet of sugar again and shakes it. He still has no intention of putting it in his coffee.

 

“It's been worse,” he says.

 

She nods again, looks to the door and if there's any sign that this is tearing her apart as much as it is him, he can't see it.

 

He wonders if this is how Murdock feels. He doesn't like to compare the two of them. He doesn't like to think of them sharing all that much but on some level they do share this - this infatuation with her. Even if he knows what he feels has long since passed anything as superficial as an infatuation.

 

“Well I guess that's it then,” she says, draining her coffee and leaning back in the booth.

 

And he wishes he could ask her what she means. He wants to drill it down, lay it all out in front of them. Everything. Everything from the moment he first laid eyes on her to the second he undressed her and took her to bed, to that moment at the river when he thought maybe he could do it again. He wants to ask, he wants to beg and plead and he's too chickenshit to do anything.

 

“Guess so,” he says.

 

He's not sure it's disappointment he sees in her eyes or something else, something like anger or hurt. Frustration.

 

And then she's gathering up her things, stuffing the envelope into her purse and pulling her gloves on.

 

It's too soon. It's too soon for her to go even though he knows it's the right time. But he wanted to be selfish, he wanted to draw this out, just sit with her and be with her because he doesn't know if it will ever happen again, doesn't think it will. But she's making the choice for him and as he watches her he sees the first hint of tears glistening in her eyes. They don't spill though. She won't give him that. She'll never give him that. Her tears are not for him. They never have been.

 

And when she looks at him again they're gone, chased away with nothing but willpower.

 

She stands, pushes her hair out of her eyes.

 

“Karen…?”

 

“You be safe Frank,” she says without looking at him. “Try not to hurt yourself too much.”

 

She touches his shoulder as she walks past. It's a gentle squeeze, fingers pressing into the hollows of his collarbone, knuckles briefly brushing the skin of his neck.

 

And then she's gone and the door to the cafe swings shut behind her and he doesn't think he's felt more alone since she left him in his apartment with nothing but the crumpled stained bedsheets and the empty space where she once was.

 

He sits for a while, stares at his coffee and he tells himself it's for the best. He crumples the packet of sugar in his fist, feels the granules grinding against each other beneath the paper and when it breaks, covering the table in white powder, his resolve falls apart with it.

 

“Jesus Christ Karen,” he says under his breath.

 

He stands, grabs his jacket, tosses some dollar bills on the table and heads out into the street. It's cold and the wind is shrill but he can see her in the distance, blonde hair shining like sunlight against the murky backdrop of the day, coat still swishing around her legs. She's walking fast, like she knew he would follow her and she was doing everything she could to get away. He hates how that makes him feel.

 

He catches up with her as she's about to cross 11th. She doesn't seem surprised and he wonders if that's because he's so fucking predictable or if she just knows him better than he wants to admit.

 

“Karen wait,” he calls and she stops and her shoulders sag before she turns to face him.

 

That leaf is still caught in her hair.

 

“What is it Frank?”

 

Resigned. Defeated.

 

He doesn't have an answer. He doesn't have anything. He just wants to apologise and be with her, go home with her and not care about the consequences. He wants to make her promises. He wants to sleep again like the two nights he did in her arms. He wants to tell her that she makes him feel like the world doesn't need to be punished until it makes sense anymore. He can do none of these things. He can do none of these things and keep his resolve.

 

So he touches her shoulder, presses his fingers into the thick material of her coat and imagines what her skin feels like underneath it.

 

“Karen I have to do this…”

 

Soft, gentle now. Begging.

 

“I know you do.”

 

“Then…”

 

“It's not about that. You know it isn't.”

 

He does. He's betraying them. He's betraying her. Everything else aside, he's throwing away the night she came to him to confess the sin that wasn't a sin, the night he came to her to lose himself in his grief. He's not just destroying the memory of her in his bed, he's destroying who they are to one another.

 

All he wants to stop it, smooth it over, but he can't. And he still can’t bring himself to lie to her.

 

So he looks at her, doesn't say anything. And she stares back and the wind whips her hair and suddenly she’s that demonic angel again, that thing that fucks him up and rips him apart piece by piece.

 

He reaches out, fingers sliding into her hair. It feels as soft and fine as he remembers. Smooth and clean. And he wants to wrap it around his hand again, pull her close and put his mouth on hers. Do it here in the street where everyone can see them.

 

“Karen…”

 

_Just let this be over. Just let this end. One way or another._

 

He can't live like this. Neither can she.

 

But for now - _for now_ \- he just wants to drown in her eyes. For now he just wants to do nothing but look at her even if it means he's stealing moments that aren't for him.

 

He slides the broken leaf out of her hair, watches as it slips through his fingers to the cold concrete sidewalk, and then she swallows, takes a step back.

 

“I know what you're doing Frank,” she holds up her hand like she's saying goodbye. “I know why you're doing this. So you better get on and do it.”

 

She always did have the ability to see right through him, to grind him into dust under one of her sharp heels. No reason to think now would be any different.

 

And then she's walking away again and he doesn't have the strength to follow her.

 

~~~

 

 _She tells him she doesn't love him. Not the way he wants her to. The truth is she wonders if he loves her the way_ he _wants to. If maybe they're both banging away at this thing which they should have just left to die a natural death months ago. She doesn't say this. There's no reason to rub salt in a wound. There's no reason he needs to face the hard truths now._

 

_Still, he's hurt. He's confused and disoriented and doesn't understand what's happened and what's still happening._

 

_She says she can't live a lie and he tells her it isn’t a lie, that what he feels is a singular truth. And then he reminds her that she promised to try, to give it a go and they'd barely given it anything._

 

 _He's not wrong. She_ did _promise. She did when she thought there was no hope left. She did when Frank walked out of her life and she thought she'd never ever see him again._

 

_She knows it was wrong now but it doesn't change anything._

 

I'm sorry, _she says and lays a kiss on his cheek,_ I'm so sorry but what I feel for him… it goes too deep, it hurts too much.

 

 _Matt frowns._ Why do you want to hurt, Karen? Why do you want to punish yourself like this?

 

_She smiles wanly, takes his hand and squeezes._

 

Because with him it doesn't feel like punishment at all.


	5. You keep making up more reasons to justify such treason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay yay - it seems like the end of this is finally in sight and I am going to finish this thing at six chapters. Thank God because this was originally only supposed to be three chapters. Once this is done then I can carry on with Be My Saviour and a few one shots and possibly launch one of my new ideas.
> 
> Also I must add that I have cheated a little bit here. I obviously watched The Punisher between this chapter and the last one and it just made more sense the change my OC of "Owen" to Curtis. I'm not a huge fan of creating my own characters in fic so I went back and changed Owen to Curtis. It doesn't affect the story at all but I thought it was nicer to include a canon character who Frank would have probably had contact with prior to The Punisher.
> 
> Anyway, without further ado, here is chapter five. Please leave me a review if you enjoyed it.

_The city is burning._

 

_There’s smoke over the Hudson and the night sky is tinged with an orange hue. Sirens wail and Karen counts seven fire engines screaming through the streets as she heads out of the hospital doors and into the frigid February air._

 

_All she has is his coat around her shoulders but maybe that’s all she needs._

 

_There have been four more explosions near the docks and a bomb scare at the newspaper, another at the police department. She’s spoken briefly with Ellison and he threw around a lot of words like “inside job” and “conspiracy” and then “revenge” and “cover up”._

 

_She thinks he’s probably right on all counts and so does everyone else; between countless messages warning people to stay indoors, the late-night news is already speculating that the Stuttafords organisation had far deeper, more insidious roots; roots that reached right into the heart of the city and wrapped themselves around councillors and lawmakers. They’re behind the bombs too - there’s no doubt about that._

 

_It’s Fisk’s strategy all over again: remove the opposition voices and strike fear into everyone that’s left. But, like Fisk, they underestimated Hell’s Kitchen and the heroes that live in it._

 

_Mahoney is already making arrests. He too escaped the yacht and jumped straight into action, didn't even stop to take a breath. He’s already been on the news looking exhausted and angry and yet she knows how determined he is. He won’t let this slide; not until justice has been served._

 

_And heroes serving up justice is something Hell’s Kitchen has a lot of._

 

_But there’s nothing she can do about any of that now. No matter what happens, tomorrow will come … and then another tomorrow after that._

 

_She shivers against the cold, spots a yellow cab making its way down the street towards her._

 

_Her car is in Poughkeepsie and the subways are closed but Claire managed to work a miracle and get her a taxi willing to come out in all this. She owes Claire a lot._

 

_When she slides into the back seat she gives the driver an address somewhere near Frank’s place and he looks at her dubiously._

 

You sure you need to go all the way there ma’am? Tonight? They’re saying to stay indoors. Can’t it wait for tomorrow?

 

_She shakes her head. No, it can’t wait._

 

_The city is burning and so is she._

 

~~~

 

It's a cold Friday evening in the beginning of February when he sees her again. He’s unkempt and unshaven - dead men’s blood still stubbornly clinging to his fingernails - and he’s exhausted. He’s driven for more than a full day and night, 27 hours and 58 minutes by his count, stopping only for shitty coffee and bathroom breaks along the way. He’s not really sure how he’s here - how he’s not a wreck of flesh and twisted metal on the side of the I-40 - but he is.

 

He’s here, standing outside her front door. And he shouldn’t be.

 

He _really_ fucking shouldn’t be.

 

It's not even 5pm but already it's dark in that slightly cruel way that only the winter twilight knows how to be. Shadows frame her little ground-floor apartment almost protectively and, for a moment, he imagines they're a ward of some kind - a spell intended to keep him out.

 

But that, he tells himself, is just crazy talk. And maybe after living on nothing but coffee and adrenalin for the past few days he's allowed a little crazy talk.

 

He glances around. The block is surprisingly quiet for this time of day. There's no one coming or going, no kids playing, no cars even. It doesn't feel anything like the start of the weekend in Hell’s Kitchen and he doesn't know if that's good or bad.

 

No matter, he isn't here to divide the good from the bad anyway.

 

He runs a hand over his head. His hair is short again, cropped close to his skull like it always is when he’s working. Even so it feels greasy, caked with the grime of the road and the filth of other things he doesn't want to think about.

 

He needs a shower, he needs a meal and, more than anything, he needs sleep. He needs to crawl into a bed with a firm mattress and soft sheets and he needs to find a way to just check out; reset himself and let some of the horror of what he's seen and done fade.

 

 _Soon_.

 

Maybe.

 

All in good time.

 

There are things he needs to do first. It might not feel like it right now but there are more important things than sleep.

 

He takes a step towards her door. His footfalls are loud and heavy on the pavestones. It feels difficult too, painful even; like his legs are made of stone and he has to swing them awkwardly to make them move.

 

He’s being stupid. He knows this. He's giving himself over to silly fantasies and imaginings. He’s drained, physically and emotionally and even so his brain is still going a mile a minute. He's spent the last four months chasing down the worst humanity has to offer. He's tortured them, punished them and finally, mercifully - more for himself than them - he murdered them. He did all that. He came so close to losing himself so many times - death looming like both a terrible monster and a comforting lover in front of him - and he wasn't afraid.

 

And yet… and yet now he is.

 

He's terrified.

 

He's shaking like a leaf, a feral animal quivering at the wrong end of a shotgun.

 

 _She_ does this to him. _Karen Page_ does this to him. And part of him - the part that isn’t revelling in it - just can't believe it. He didn't need to chop off his arms to feel that again. He just needs her. He's always known.

 

He isn't dead.

 

And maybe the real reason he's here is to show her that.

 

He takes another step, and then another and another. Somehow the shadows seem deeper, blacker. He tries so hard to pretend he doesn't see it, to focus on that little light burning inside her apartment and the silhouette he knows is her moving from one room to another.

 

_I'm sorry Karen. I'm sorry. You were right and I shouldn't have left. I should have found another way._

 

Maybe he's finding one now. Maybe something good can come out of all the badness he's seen.

 

He sucks in a breath, steels himself and then raises his hand to knock on her door. There's a moment he hesitates, fist in midair, pale silver moonlight glancing off his scabbed knuckles, making the crusted blood shine like obsidian.

 

He should have washed up a bit better than he did before he came. He should have made himself presentable. She's a lady. He should treat her like one.

 

Too late now. Much much too late and there’s no turning back.

 

He's here, he’s standing on her doorstep. And he shouldn't be.

 

He really fucking shouldn't be.

 

He doesn't think about it anymore. He raps on the door, short and sharp, and waits to see how exactly the world will reform itself this time.

 

~~~

 

The universe has always had a way of throwing him curveballs: hurting him in ways he least anticipated; dumping shit into his lap from the direction opposite to the one he was facing.

 

First it was Maria and the children and their blood spattered across some painted ponies the kids had grown out of anyway. Then it was Red and his code and his honour and his stalwart belief that Frank was somehow redeemable. Then it was Schoonover and the betrayal that still cuts through his chest like a knife.

 

And finally it was Karen. Karen Page, and the way she climbed inside him, got to know him from the inside out and the outside in, and he didn't know about it until it was already too late. Except that's not entirely true because it's always been like that with her. It's never really been anything tame or even platonic. Not from the moment she took it upon herself to go poking around in his home until the second she walked away from him that blustery October afternoon in Hell’s Kitchen.

 

He guesses by now he should get used to it. He should be _better_ at dealing with these kind of surprises. But he isn't. Some things you just can't anticipate.

 

Some you shouldn't even try.

 

When she opens the door it's obvious she's expecting someone else. She's all big smiles and sparkling smokey eyes. There's something incongruous about her too and it's only later that he realises it's because she's dressed casually in blue jeans and a thin cream sweater but her hair is styled in an elaborate chignon and her make-up is done. But for a split-second he doesn’t register anything but her. She’s here and so is he and he’s missed her so much that just being near her like this makes him feel like a huge missing part of himself is clicking back into place.

 

It feels like it takes a long time before he speaks.

 

“Hello Karen,” he says and he can't help but notice the way his voice goes softer as he says her name, the way it shudders and loses any trace of bravado.

 

And even though he knew it was coming, he hates how her smile fades, how her expression turns from happy to confused and then anxious; disappointed even. And something else. Something almost like guilt.

 

He did that too. He has no one to blame but himself.

 

He's lost so much and what he doesn't lose he throws away.

 

“Frank.”

 

Her voice is flat and hard, an iciness nestled at its core that makes him cower a little inside.  He's not sure he truly expected anything else.

 

And then she just looks at him and he can't decide if she's waiting for him to say something or trying to come up with words of her own. But, when the moment stretches thin and taut and she folds her arms and leans against the door frame, he realises she's not going to give him an easy out.

 

He should have seen that coming too. She doesn't give him anything he doesn't deserve.

 

“I wanted to let you know I was back...”

 

His voice cracks horribly and he trails off. Even though his words are not untrue, they feel silly and inadequate and they don't begin to cover everything he wants to say.

 

She nods slowly, purses her lips.

 

“Been almost four months Frank.”

 

It has. It has been four months even though it felt so much longer than that. He missed so much too. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, his own goddamn birthday even. Not that there was ever any guarantee of spending any of those holidays with her. Not that anything was set in stone. But looking at her now, he realises there was a chance, and it was small and slim but it _was_ a chance and it kills him a little that he passed it up.

 

He doesn't want to lose any more.

 

It could be good … it could all be good if it was with her; if she'd give him that.

 

“I had things I needed to do,” he says. “Work.”

 

“You do it? You work?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She nods solemnly. He knows she's still pissed and that there's a long way to go before he's forgiven - if she ever decides to do that - but she gets it all the same. He can count on her for that. She's always had a certain pragmatism in her approach to what he does. She sees a greater good; the zero sum game in his code. He thinks that's why she scares the shit out of him.

 

She lets the silence linger for a few seconds and then she looks him up and down, cocks her head.

 

“So what do you want Frank?” she asks and he hates the sigh in her voice, the exasperation. No matter what’s happened between them before she’s never made him feel unwanted, like he was a chore or an annoyance.

 

He guesses he deserves it. After all, he did leave and, from her point of view, it didn't matter how she felt about it.

 

Still, it’s the worst thing she can do and he thinks she knows it.

 

He swallows.

 

“I wanted to see you,” he says. “Make sure you were okay.”

 

“Four months Frank.”

 

Her voice is still tight and as always, she’s relentless. She won’t give him an inch he doesn’t earn. He doesn’t think he’d love her if she did.

 

“I know.”

 

“You couldn't call?”

 

_Would you have wanted me to? After the last time? After you left me standing there in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen with nothing but a broken leaf from your hair and the October chill in your voice? Because if I'd thought you wanted that I would have. I would have called._

 

He doesn't say this but he thinks of all the nights he couldn’t sleep and he would lie in his bed listening to Curtis tossing and turning in the next room. He thinks of how he'd pick up his phone and flick through his contacts until he found her number, how his thumb would hover over the button to dial and how he'd never press it.

 

He saved a picture of her too. He knew that was careless and dangerous but he could never bring himself to delete it. He’d open it and watch how her face brightened up the room, casting blue shadows on the walls before it started to fade. And just as she was disappearing, he'd touch the screen again… and again… and again.

 

He must have spent hours doing that. Hours and hours and countless nights all lost to her.

 

“Frank?”

 

He lifts his head, curls his hands into fists to stop them shaking.

 

He has nothing. He has less than nothing. His zero sum game is just that.

 

“I'm sorry,” he says.

 

She softens then, shoulders relaxing slightly and she bites her bottom lip. When she speaks he doesn't imagine the tremor in her voice, that little patch of warmth in the frostiness.

 

“At least I would have known you were still okay, even if you weren't here.”

 

There's nothing he can really say to that so he nods, looks away. It's difficult sometimes when he realises that there are people out there who still care about him, people who get hurt when he hurts himself. The list is short and Karen's right at the top, but that in itself makes it more important than he cares to admit.

 

She sighs and when he looks back at her, her eyes are glassy and she won't meet his gaze.

 

“Was it bad?” she asks.

 

He gives her a wan smile. Yeah it was bad. These things always are and there's no reason they shouldn't be. It was a nightmare from the second he set foot on Texan soil to the moment he put a bullet in the head of the last man.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Is your friend okay?”

 

“Curtis? Yeah.”

 

Curtis is fine all things considered. The work was difficult and they spent a lot of time waiting around for contacts; more time trying to find out where they were keeping the people they were trafficking and finally months working their way up through the ranks until they were sure they had them all.

 

He's staying with his sister and niece now, maybe for a while. Frank thinks part of it is just wanting to be with his family, with something solid and wholesome and good. But another part of it - the deeper, scarier part - is that Curtis needs time to put himself back together after everything he saw. And Frank wishes it was just about the case and the cartel but he knows that isn't true. Despite Curtis’ background and everything he knows about Frank and what he does, he still likes to do things by the book. If someone is hurt, you help them; if someone is doing something wrong, you call the cops; if something is wrong you fix it.

 

You never do what Frank does. You don't take it into your own hands and then use those hands to pull it apart. You don't hurt. You don't kill. You don't punish.

 

And it wasn't like Curtis did that kind of dirty work while they were there but Frank knows he feels complicit all the same.

 

But he doesn't want to talk about this now. Curtis has his demons and, after the last four months, probably more than he should, but that's his battle.

 

And Karen Page is Frank's.

 

He looks at her again and it hurts. It's hurts because he knows how she sees him and it's vastly different to how she saw him before he went away.

 

“Karen, can we talk?” he asks. “Just for a little while? Take you out for coffee if you don't want me in your home?”

  

She frowns, bites her lip again, harder this time.

 

He doesn't like to watch her battle with herself. He likes it less if it's because of him.

 

“I’m on my way out now,” she says and she sounds almost relieved to reveal this fact. “That Stuttafords thing, I blew it wide open…”

 

He knows. He followed the papers religiously while he was away, scouring them for any news, any article she’d written. And she came through like a champ. Not that he doubted her. Not for a second. He wasn't even surprised when the police arrested all the top executives. There was a photo in _The Bulletin_ of the CEO and upper management being led away in handcuffs and Karen Page’s front page editorial alongside it. It was scathing, outlining all the money they stole, all the pensions lost, the way they were laundering it through fake charities at the expense of the people they were meant to be looking after. _The Bulletin_ ’s website even had pictures of the villas and mansions the owners had bought throughout Europe juxtaposed next to photos of the small hovels their clients were being forced to live it. It was damning in a way only Karen Page knows how to be and he can't deny the swell of pride he felt when he saw it.

 

“I know,” he says and something passes between them. It's sweet and conspiratorial and wonderfully different from the tone of this encounter so far. He knows she's thinking of all those nights he spent in her apartment poring over the evidence, trying to make sense out of the money trail. She thought it wasn't going to be worth it but it was.

 

Then again, every second he spends with her is worth it.

 

Briefly, he entertains the idea that this newfound common ground might hold out and they might be able to find their way back to each other. He’ll be forgiven and she’ll invite him inside, forget that she's angry and they can start again. It doesn't matter how, or what parts of their baggage they want to leave behind, they'll make it happen.

 

But it's a shortlived fantasy because then she seems to remember herself and she frowns again.

 

“The city wanted to thank the people involved. Media, police, Mahoney even, private investigators, the brokers who are trying to reclaim the money. They’ve given me a free weekend cruise starting at Poughkeepsie and then sailing down to…”

 

She’s hedging. It's subtle because she's actually giving him information - useful information - but all the same, he knows she's trying to fill the silence with lots of facts until he eventually tells her he’ll come back when things have quietened down.

 

But he’s not going to do that. He’s not going to leave again unless she tells him to go.

 

“Karen,” he interrupts and she breathes in sharply. “I just wanna talk … about everything.”

 

She looks away, makes a pained sound in the back of her throat.

 

Behind him he hears a car door and he doesn't miss how she glances over his shoulder towards the street and then seems wholly relieved at what she sees or doesn't see there. Still, her eyes linger a bit too long and he knows she's tallying up her options in the hope she can find something that won't hurt too much when she says it.

 

But in the end she goes for honesty. She always does.

 

“Damnit Frank, you can't just leave for so long and then come back and demand that I drop everything because you’ve decided you don't like how things are.”

 

He thinks he knew she was going to say this even before he got here. It's simple cause and effect. You kill a man and he doesn't get back up, you feed a starving dog and it loves you for life, you hurt Karen Page and you suffer for your sins.

 

He knows he should give her this, let her tear him apart and thank her for it on the other side, but he's weak and the words sting in a way he isn't ready for.

 

“I know. I know Karen and I'm sorry. I have no right to ask you any of this, not after I left, not after I... but…” he trails off, voice dropping low as he realises he's run out of whatever flimsy reasons he thought he had. “Please.”

 

He's begging. But then again, he's always begging when it comes to her.

 

She looks away, blinking rapidly.

 

“God Frank,” she says hunching her shoulders and hugging herself. She shivers too and he's pretty sure it has nothing to do with the chill in the air.

 

“Karen please…”

 

He should hate the way his voice sounds, meek and utterly devoid of any edge but he doesn't. There's something entirely comforting - if not a little twisted - about being laid bare like this and knowing that despite who and what he is now, he can still feel this way; that there's a woman who can grind him into dust under the spike of one of her heels.

 

He shifts to the side, takes a step towards her, hands twitching, trigger finger drumming fast against the leg of his jeans.

 

The truth is he’s losing. He can feel it slipping through his fingers. Her ambivalence says it all and salvaging it is near impossible. She doesn't want this and she doesn't want him and she's too afraid to just come out and say it and send him packing like he deserves. And he does deserve it.

  

He knows all about the kind of pressure he unwittingly puts on people who care for him. Maria felt it. She knew she was losing pieces of him every time he went away; losing him and getting a ticking time bomb in his place.

 

There's no reason Karen should be different. Even though she is.

 

And somewhere deep down in a place he tries to deny exists, something cracks. It's mean and cowardly and most of all, it's terrified. Despite the slightly sadistic pleasure he gets out of being destroyed by Karen Page, there's always that gut instinct for survival, an all consuming need to avoid this specific kind of pain. So he does what he always does.

 

“You know what,” he says and his voice is loud and hard. “Don't talk to me then. Let's just leave this where it is. Let's pretend it didn't happen… and you can go back to your life and forget all about...”

 

“Jesus Christ Frank stop it!” she says and almost automatically his mouth snaps shut. “Stop acting like a child the second you don't get exactly what you want.

 

“You don't get to do this. You don't get to call the shots. You were _gone_. You were gone for months and I didn't know if you were dead or alive. I can’t pretend that didn’t happen and I won’t let you do it either.”

 

She sighs, squares her shoulders and looks him right in the eye.

 

“I needed you to _stay_ and you didn't.”

 

That hits him right in the gut. She had to know it would. He’s always been the type of man who took his responsibilities seriously, who never went back on his word. Until now. Until he met her and loved her and needed her and didn’t know what to do with any of it.

 

For the second time in his life he feels like a failure.

 

She must see it too because it’s almost like she can’t bear to look at him and she turns away, wiping at her nose and eyes. She leaves a smear of mascara on her hand, a matching black stain down her cheek.

 

The worst of it is that she's right. She's always fucking right. He wonders if there was ever a time in the history of the universe that she's ever actually been wrong.

 

“Karen, I…”

 

But she doesn't let him finish.

 

“Maybe this is how it needs to be,” she says and then swallows hard. “Maybe we shouldn't be around each other. It's too much and it gets confused and we don't…”

 

“Oh for Christ’s sake Karen,” he says and she flinches. “You don’t believe that. You didn’t believe it then and you don’t believe it now.”

 

“But _you_ did.”

 

That’s true. He did. He ran to the other side of the country because of how much he believed it. He took on what he thought was a suicide mission because of it. He didn’t listen either. Not to her and not to Curtis who told him over and over again that he needed to go back home and be with her.

 

“I did,” he admits. “I don’t anymore.”

 

She sighs, looks up into the night sky like maybe there’s an answer buried there in the stars.

 

“So why now Frank? What’s different?”

 

It’s a reasonable question but he has no idea where to begin. He could tell her how much he missed her, how even when he wasn’t actively thinking about her she was always there, lingering in the back of his mind. He could tell her how he saw families torn apart and then reunited again and how he saw her in every single one of their happy tears. He could tell her that after all the badness and all horrific things that happened he didn’t want to waste anymore time and that maybe - _maybe_ \- after four months of Curtis’ gentle urging he finally understood the magnitude of what he was giving up.

 

He could tell her any one of these things or all of them and they’d all be true. Every last goddamn word.

 

But he doesn’t say any of them.

 

It’s like he told Red, sometimes that moment of clarity comes from the strangest of places. And sometimes it doesn’t come from anywhere at all.

 

It's time. It's time to come clean and tell her only truth that matters. She won't accept anything less. There's no reason she should.

 

He's quiet for a few seconds and his eyes bore into hers.

 

Then a deep breath, a heavy swallow and his heart pounding in his ears.

 

“Jesus Christ Karen, I love you. You know I do.”

 

It's easier to say than he thought it would be. The words seem to just slip out of his mouth and hang in the air between them, shimmering and shining, waiting for her to take them or add her own.

 

But she does neither.

 

Instead her despair and confusion turns to shock and disbelief, and then finally, worse than anything that came before it, scepticism.

 

He doesn’t know what he thought would happen. Maybe he was being a stupid asshole and hoping those three little words had their own magic and somehow they’d make everything okay. Maybe he was just hoping to surprise her, catch her off guard and break her a little bit. Or maybe he just wanted to tell her the truth.

 

He’s not sure. He doesn’t think he ever will be.

 

Either way it doesn’t work. Either way it disintegrates so horribly he wishes he could catch his voice and stuff it back into his mouth, down his throat and pretend it never happened.

 

The silence is deafening. It’s not just muffled or disguising a deep red roar like it was when he was back in Afghanistan and his blood was up and the chaos around him felt soothing and familiar. This is different. This is like all the air in the world got sucked out in one long breath and everything went still and excruciatingly cold at the same time.

 

He forces himself to keep looking at her and even that feels static and painful.

 

She’s not doing anything though - she’s just standing there still as a statue, nothing but tensed muscle and tight shoulders.

 

And then she’s something else.

 

He can’t describe what she does as crumbling because that isn’t quite right. She doesn’t fall to her knees or grab onto the door frame for support, but again there’s a softening to her and her whole body sags, arms relaxing around her middle, hands twitching as she makes to reach out for him and then thinks the better of it and pulls back.

 

“Oh Frank,” she says and her voice is choked and full of something that sounds just like pity. “Oh Frank … no, no.”

 

Sound and air seem to flood back into the world and he finds himself gulping for breath at the same time as her words register in his head.

 

“Oh Frank. Oh god,” she says again and she sounds like she's talking to a small child who’s come to show her the sore place and beg her to kiss it better.

 

And maybe that isn't that far from the truth.

 

“Karen…”

 

“No,” She shakes her head, holds up her hand for a second before bringing it to her face and pinching the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes tightly. “No.”

 

So he stands there, in the cold, hands flexing at his sides, watching her fall apart.

 

The truth is he's not sure how this can be a surprise to her. It wasn't to him. Even when he was doing his best to forget it and deny it, it was never a shock that he could love her like this. It's not like she wasn't there the night they made love. It's not like she didn't hear him the night he took her to the river or that she missed the way he chased her when she left the coffee shop.

 

It's not like she didn't _know_.

 

But now… now it's not only like this is a revelation to her but also like she doesn't believe it at all. And maybe if he wasn't sleep deprived, if his latent bloodlust wasn't the only thing keeping him standing, if his heart wasn't being ripped out of his chest and obliterated on the ground, he’d know what to say or do.

 

Maybe.

 

Even he thinks the possibility is remote.

 

He takes a step towards her and puts a hand on her shoulder, moves her slightly to face him and uses his other hand to pry her fingers away from her face and squeeze them tightly in his.

 

“What are we doing Karen?” he asks gently. “Hey. You gotta tell me what we are doing.”

 

He doesn’t miss the way she rolls her shoulder under his palm, nor the way her fingers slide between his. For another good few seconds neither of them do anything and then suddenly she takes a deep breath, swallows hard, and he ducks his head so he can see her eyes as she opens them.

 

He's mildly surprised she's not crying anymore. It’s true that her eyes are glassy and bloodshot but there's no actual tears.

 

She says his name again and her hand curls around his, hard and strong and not even a little gentle.

 

“C'mon,” he says, voice low as a whisper, thumb pressing into her collarbone. “It ain't like you didn't know. Been like this for a long time. Don't even need to be as smart as you to figure this dumbass shit out.”

 

He doesn't know why he's trying for levity. Frankly, he doesn't know why he's trying for anything right now.

 

But she's not smiling.

 

“No Frank,” she says. “No.”

 

“What do you mean “no”?”

 

“Things…Things are different now…”

 

“What things?” he eases his grip on her shoulder and tries so hard to ignore that gnawing feeling in the pit of his belly.

 

Her eyes flicker to the left and towards the street where his truck is parked and she tenses in his arms, body going hard and taut. And then, because he guesses the universe is a bitch and likes to rub salt in raw wounds, he hears footsteps behind him, the click of an unnecessary cane on the stony ground.

 

He doesn't even have to turn around to know it's Murdock.

 

Because of course it's Murdock. It’s always Murdock.

 

“Frank? Frank is that you?”

 

Red sounds friendly enough on the surface but it doesn't take a genius to hear the wariness in his tone. The two of them might have called a truce the night Frank saved his life but it seems an unspoken condition of that truce that it only applies if Frank keeps his distance and leaves Hell's Kitchen out of whatever war he happens to be waging.

 

He’s pretty sure that in Murdock’s mind he's overstepping some undefined line right now and all that's left to do is decide how much leeway he gets. He's guessing it won't be much if Red happens to find out why he's actually here.

 

“Frank?” he asks again. “Karen?”

 

Frank rolls his eyes and shakes his head, looks down at his boots and then back up at Karen. As he expects her face is like a wall but the way her fingers flutter in his hand tells him that's as much a facade as anything else that might be going on here.

 

“How you doing Red?” he doesn't try and hide the irritation in his voice.

 

“I didn't know you were in town.”

 

Murdock manages to make it sound like that’s a personal failing and something he fully intends to rectify in the future.

 

Frank straightens up and takes a step backwards, lets his hand slide off Karen's shoulder, pulls the other out of her grip.

 

“That’s okay. Even you can't micromanage everything.”

 

He's being an ass. He knows he is. He's not in the least bit sorry.

 

Matt's opens his mouth to say something but before he can Karen is talking. “Matt, give Frank and me a few minutes.”

 

Murdock frowns at that and Frank almost wants to laugh out loud. It would be an ugly laugh, more of a bark really. There’s something deeply ironic about Murdock worrying about Karen spending a few minutes with him. It would almost be funny if it wasn't so fucked up.

 

“Is everything alright Karen?” he asks uncertainly.

 

She purses her lips, glances at Frank and then slips past him to touch Matt on the shoulder and squeeze his bicep.

 

“Everything's fine.”

 

Frank doesn't need to be able to hear heartbeats or smell fear to know that isn't true. Yet somehow Murdock seems to accept it without any further pressing and it makes Frank wonder if he really doesn't know it's a lie or if this is just something the two of them have come to accept they do to one another.

 

He also wonders how she can be so relentless and determined with him and yet so unconcerned with this.

 

“It's really okay Matt,” she says. “Just wait inside. I'll be there in a minute. We’ve got to leave soon anyway.”

 

Matt nods slowly but he still looks dubious as he plants a kiss on her cheek and squeezes her arm. He nods to Frank but doesn't say anything as he heads into her apartment, closes the door halfway behind him.

 

And then it's just them again. Just them and the cold February air and the aching knowledge of what's happened while he was away.

 

_Four months Frank. Four months._

 

A lot can happen in four months. A lot that isn't just cleaning human detritus out of Texas.

 

Karen watches her door for a full minute and then seemingly satisfied that Murdock isn't actively trying to listen to them, she comes to him, takes his arm and pulls him through the small courtyard and then across the road to his truck. He's not sure that's far enough away so Murdock can't hear but lying to themselves and to each other is something the two of them do with alarming ease so he's not sure it really matters.

 

It seems darker than it did before. Colder too. She's shivering in her thin sweater and him, well he's just numb in a way he hasn't felt in a very long time.

 

The gentleman in him wants to offer her his coat, but he doesn't.

 

For a long time neither of them say anything. She watches him with catlike wariness and he thinks he does the same. He tells himself he’s going to wait for her to speak, let this terrible moment stretch long and taut until she explains herself. But he's never been good at that. He's never had any sense or self control when it comes to her.

 

And he’s mean. He can be so mean.

 

“Different huh? This all looks exactly the fucking same to me.”

 

“Oh god Frank…”

 

“You trying to be the thing he wants. Him letting you pretend you are… lying to each other about it.”

 

She sighs, hugs herself again. “You were gone Frank. You left. That's on you.”

 

He snorts. “Goddamnit Karen. You know that ain't what we’re talking about.”

 

She laughs then. It's a horrible sound, ragged, cruel and nothing like her at all.

 

“Yeah, I guess we aren't. What's that thing you guys say? The best form of defence is attack? It's easier to get righteous about Matt and me than face up to the fact that you abandoned everything and broke my…”

 

She claps a hand over her mouth, looks at him guiltily.

 

The starlight glances off her hair, turns her skin luminous. She's beautiful and he doesn't want to fight.

 

Another stretched silence and then he breathes out long and loud and briefly considers letting it slide but he's cruel. He's so very cruel. And he's never been one to fight fair.

 

“What Karen?” he asks evenly. “What did I break?”

 

She pointedly ignores his question.

 

“You walked away,” she says softly. “You left.”

 

“I did," he agrees. "I did. So what now? You want me to leave again?”

 

Another sigh and she crosses her arms over her chest, leans against his truck and blinks tears out of her eyes.

 

“It's complicated.”

 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It's a lot of things but it ain't complicated. You either feel it or you don't.”

 

“Oh for God's sake, that's the complicated part,” she takes a step backwards, looks up at the sky again for those elusive answers.

 

She won't find them. He knows that much. He spent hundreds of nights doing the same thing after Maria died and he got nothing. He got nothing until he had blood dripping through his fingers and bodies left in his wake.

 

He had nothing until Karen Page walked into his hospital room and shoved his family in his face while she looked for her own redemption.

 

_(We don’t get to choose the things that fix us.)_

 

He sighs, rubs his knuckles on his coat, watches as a scab tears off and clings to the rough fabric.

 

Her voice is defeated when she speaks.

 

“That night…” she says and he raises his head to look at her. “It should never have happened… we should never have… it screwed everything up…”

 

“No, no it didn't.”

 

“It did,” she insists. “Look at us. Look at you… we did it and now we’re all confused...”

 

“I'm not fucking confused Karen. I don’t think you are either.”

 

 _Don't lie to me,_ he thinks, _dear God, don't lie to me, because that isn’t something we can move past._

 

“We made a mistake, a stupid mistake and… and now it’s a mess.”

 

He actually reels at her words, takes a step backwards and has to steady himself with a hand against the cold metal of his truck.

 

She doesn't notice though. She's not even looking at him. Instead she's focused on her apartment and every last inch of her is screaming that she’d rather be in there with Matt than out here with him.

 

_(Rip my heart out and stamp on it. Feed that shit to a dog.)_

 

Still though. _Still_.

 

He can't leave it. He can't let it slide.

 

“You think it was stupid?” he asks and his mouth is so dry the words barely come out and he has to try again. “You think what we did was stupid?”

 

“Yes Frank. It was really stupid. It was a stupid thing to do and now you’re all…”

 

“I’m what Karen? What am I?”

 

She turns her attention back to him, starts to say something and then bites it down, swallows it. Apparently some things are too cruel even for Karen Page to say. But then again, apparently some things aren’t.

 

She stops. He’s not sure exactly what that means or how she does it but suddenly she’s not crying and she’s not speaking, she’s barely even moving. And it’s quiet again, that same suffocating silence that leaves him gasping for breath and drowns them both.

 

And she looks utterly lost.

 

“Go on,” he says softly. “What am I?”

 

_A dead man? A psycho murderer? A deranged sociopath with PTSD and a thirst for vengeance that will never be slaked?_

 

“A husband,” she says. “A grieving, hurting, lonely husband without a wife.”

 

“Karen…”

 

“It was your first time since Maria,” she continues and her voice is calmer than it should be. “It was your first time and I shouldn't have taken that from _you_.”

 

_(The people that can hurt you - the ones that can get inside you and rip you apart - they’re the ones who are close enough to do it.)_

 

For a moment he just stands there looking at her. He’s surprised by how similar this feels to Kandahar, to the times when he thought it was all over and Schoonover and Rawlins were going to be sending him home to Maria in a box covered with a flag. And maybe that’s taking things too far, maybe he’s just being dramatic. But he's too tired to care.

 

Maybe it doesn’t matter how your life goes up in flames, maybe it only matters that it does.

 

“It shouldn’t have been me,” she’s saying. “It shouldn’t have been us. Not with what we have… to ruin it like that.”

 

“We didn’t ruin anything Karen,” he runs a hand over his head and when he speaks again his voice is low and tight. “Jesus Christ, it meant something okay? _You_ don't get to do this? You don’t get to change that. It fucking meant something. Don't you fucking try and take that away from me too.”

 

“I’m not trying to take anything away from you. I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be this hard to put behind us. It shouldn’t keep coming up…”

 

“Yeah, you ever think maybe there’s a reason we can’t put it away? You think maybe there’s a reason things turn to shit when we try?”

 

“That’s what I mean Frank. We slept together and now you’re saying you love me…”

 

He can’t hear this. He _won't_. Her words make him feel dirty. They settle inside him like a terrible poison, ripping away a foundational truth he's done nothing but cling to for the past year. 

 

“You’ve got it the wrong way round if you think I’m in love with you because I slept with you.”

 

She shakes her head and even though her whole body is trembling, she sounds firm and controlled. “No Frank, I don’t think you’re in love with me _at all_.”

 

That hurts. It hurts on so many levels he doesn’t even know how to digest it, how to take it in and make this conversation part of their shared experience.

 

 

"So what Karen? I don’t know my own mind?”

 

“No… Jesus…”

 

“So I'm a liar then?”

 

“That's not what…”

 

But he doesn’t wait for her to finish.

 

"I think you’re confusing me with your boyfriend again,” he says. “You do that a lot.”

 

And just like that, the conversation is over. They both know it. There's nothing more that can be said. Part of him is grateful because he doesn't want to talk about this anymore and he knows she doesn't either. All they're doing is hurting each other, each word cutting a little deeper, a little closer to the bone.

 

She nods, wipes at her eyes, looks back at her apartment.

 

“I have to go,” she says. “I'm late.”

 

He thinks for the first time since he's met her he's disappointed in her. It's not a nice feeling at all.

 

It is what it is.

 

“Better go on then.” He reaches into his coat pocket for his keys. “Go make up some more stories so you can sleep better at night.”

 

She doesn't move and he isn't sure if she's judging him or herself. 

 

“But know this Karen, _you_ don’t get to do _this_ ,” he says as he opens the door to his truck. “You don’t want me, that’s fine. You don’t ever need to see me again. But you don’t get to say this was something that it wasn’t. You don't fucking get to take that away from me too.”

 

Unfortunately God’s honest truth is that she can and she does.

 

~~~

 

REO Speedwagon is on the radio as he drives home and it's like a bad joke. It's not the same tune Karen sang along to all those months ago, but it's close enough.

 

All their stuff sounds the same anyway.

 

So when Kevin Cronin starts singing about not fighting his feelings anymore and coming crashing through some poor unsuspecting woman’s door, Frank turns it off with a hard jab.

 

_Not tonight Kevin, there's no time for bringing ships into the shore or throwing away the oar. That's a good way to get fucked up._

 

His phone is flashing from the passenger seat, an annoying little blue dot letting him know he has a message. He doesn't need to look to know it's Curtis. He'll want to know how it went, if they sorted it out. Despite never having met Karen and his only contact with her being through Frank, he was pretty much the voice of reason during all the time they were away. He even went as far as to tell Frank he needed to go back home only days after they arrived in Dallas because he couldn't stand to see his friend so lost.

 

Frank had waved him off; told him - truthfully - that getting these child trafficking bastards was more important and it was probably for the best anyway.

 

Curtis believed the first part and not the second. It makes Frank wonder if he needs to get out of the habit of choosing such astute friends.

 

He doesn't call Curtis back when he gets home. He doesn't even look at the phone. He goes inside, picks up four months worth of junk mail and heads into the bathroom.

 

Even though he told himself he wouldn’t he finds himself staring at his reflection for a long time after he’s washed his face. His left eye is a frightening yellow edged purple bruise and there’s a scabbed cut across his cheek. He presses at it and winces. No wonder Karen sent him packing. He’s never been pretty like a picture, but maybe this was a step too far. Then again, his scars and bruises never bothered her before: in the hospital, in the diner, even in the woods when he killed Schoonover…

 

She’s fearless and despite her return to Murdock with his boyish good looks and the charm to go with it, she’s not shallow.

 

He sighs, washes his face again, gulps some water down his parched throat. It’s no use trying to understand it. There’s no logic to love and the truth is he thinks everyone would hate it if there was. He’s a living, breathing example of it. Although the living part feels generous at this point.

 

He tries not to dwell on her too much, tries not to let her climb further inside him for all the good that that does. She’s there already, insinuated in his heart and mind and, like it was with Maria, he’s pretty sure she’s not going to leave.

 

He’s pretty sure he won’t let her.

 

In the bedroom, he tugs his shirt over his head, pulls of his boots and jeans. It’s a small mercy that he’s finally come to the point when he can sleep and even though he’s alone and the truth is part of him is terrified, at least he can check out for a few hours, reset himself and deal with the morning when he gets there.

 

Except he can’t.

 

Despite being weary to his bones - the kind of fatigue he’s only really felt once before when he came home the last time and missed out on the final bit of family life the world was going to offer him - he can’t sleep. He can’t even keep his eyes closed for more than a few seconds. He tosses and turns and the mattress - once firm and supportive - feels lumpy and overly soft. He changes the pillows, wedges one into the small of his back but all that does is make him feel like he’s sleeping in a ditch and he’s done enough of that to last two lifetimes.

 

Eventually he gets up again, showers in the hope the warm water will tire him out and that being clean will afford him some comfort.

 

Neither happens.

 

He goes back to bed and lies there in the dark, watching the shadows creep up the walls. He sees Karen’s face and then Maria’s and then the kids’.

 

Angry, he flicks on the light, rises again and heads to the lounge and the couch. Not for the first time he wishes he had a dog or a cat or even a goddamn budgie - just something alive and engaged to provide some kind of company. But with what he does and who he is that in itself would be a disaster.

 

He shakes his head, pulls a random book out of a rack near his shitty small black and white TV that he never uses. The cover tells him it's _Jude the Obscure_ by Thomas Hardy and he puts it back. Apparently even after everything that's happened to him the universe still has a sick sense of humour.

 

He scratches through the rack again and finds a battered copy of selected short classics. When he opens it up on Richard Connell’s _A Most Dangerous Game_ , he doesn't have the energy to fight it anymore and he pulls that old pilling throw over his legs and starts to read.

 

He must doze a little during the night. He must, because there are swathes of time he can't remember. But it's nothing restful. He wakes up several times with fitful starts and no possibility of falling into any kind of deep sleep that will carry him to morning.

 

He paces, he cleans his guns, does a clear out of the fridge and changes his sheets - not that he has any intention of lying in them.

 

Eventually, just after 5am when it's still dark and quiet, he gives up completely and gets dressed, makes himself coffee and pulls out his phone.

 

Curtis’ message is still there and he dutifully ignores it.

 

Instead he opens his browser and does a search for the cruise the city is giving out to everyone involved in the Stuttafords case. There's not much about it really. The cruise itself isn't newsworthy and most of the coverage immediately segues into relaying the scandal itself. There is however an article by one Perry Hollis hidden in the depths of the _New York Post_ ’s website and written in the same outraged tone _The Post_ writes about pretty much everything that could be construed as kindness.

 

The article is short but it manages to hit all the bases: racism, sexism, government small enough to fit into your underwear. It decries the fact that the Stuttafords case was not blown open earlier, blames it firmly on the mayor and somehow manages to include that she was the city’s pro-choice candidate. It then goes on to level accusations at the police department - Mahoney specifically - for not doing more and then has a few less than complimentary sentences on _Bulletin_ reporter Karen Page and how she went nosing around for fame and adoration and not because she had any interest in actually exposing the company itself.

 

And what do you know? She got what she wanted because the city is giving this bunch of self-serving incompetents a free weekend cruise down the Hudson in some fancy-ass yacht. They'll be treated to gourmet food and French wine and cocktail parties. They'll be passing through Brooklyn at about 8:30 tonight if members of the public would like to get a glimpse of people doing fun things they don't deserve.

 

Frank is surprised Mr Hollis didn't encourage his readers to bring along some rotten fruit and vegetables to pelt this bunch of waterbound ingrates from the pier. He also has the distinct impression that the article would read very different had Mr Hollis been invited to join the celebrations.

 

He turns off his screen, looks at the scabs on his knuckles. Some time in the night the one that he pulled off on his coat has started to reform and it's shiny and pulls tight at his skin.

 

He wonders what Karen is doing. The rational, pragmatic part of him accepts that she's likely asleep. Probably with Murdock beside her, maybe feeling the effects of a little too much champagne. Still, he hopes that there's at least some part of her that struggled to let go as much as he did. Maybe there's some part of her that's thinking about him and all the things he said.

 

It's too much to ask. He knows this.

 

At 6:30 he gets dressed, wraps himself up in his coat and goes out in the freezing cold for a walk. He has no destination in mind.

 

The city feels empty and he knows this is just more crazy talk. It's New York. It's never empty. And yet somehow knowing he couldn't just arrive at Karen’s doorstep and find her inside is enough to leave him feel adrift.

 

He wonders if that's how it's been for her since October or if she moved on to Murdock fast enough.

 

He walks for a long time. The wind blows hard and manages to weasel into his coat, through his sweater and undershirt to his skin. He ignores it. He knows cold. He knows it as well as he knows rage and pain and fatigue.

 

He treats himself to breakfast at a brightly coloured diner. He's ravenous but he can barely manage two fried eggs and a single slice of toast. The bacon and mushrooms go untouched and when the matronly waitress comes by to refill his coffee, she regards him sadly.

 

“Ain't no use worrying about it,” she says as she wipes a spill from his table. “It might never happen.”

 

“Already did lady,” he tells her without looking up.

 

She sighs but doesn't try to make anymore small talk and for that he's eternally grateful.

 

He still stubbornly refuses to read Curtis’ message.

 

Later he stops in at Target to do some grocery shopping, restock on a few things. He sees a woman walking a big black Rottweiler and thinks again that he really should get himself a dog, find some way to work that into his lifestyle.

 

Finally, when he can't put it off any longer he goes home. His place is no emptier than it was when he left but it feels like it is.

 

He packs his groceries away, gives the bathroom and kitchen a quick clean and tries to catch a few minutes of sleep.

 

It goes much the same as the previous night just without the tossing and turning because somehow his body is too exhausted to do even that. His mind though…

 

His mind...

 

Frank knows about sleep deprivation. Most soldiers do. He knows he technically can't call himself sleep deprived yet. He _has_ been sleeping, albeit badly, and so far he's only gone 48 hours without any real rest. But still, taking a man's sleep away is a funny thing. it was a technique they used in Kandahar. They used it a lot. Sometimes you can't break a man with physical pain or starvation or threats. Maybe he doesn't care about his children or love his wife enough to want to see them again. But depriving him of his sleep seems to bring a different dimension to torture. He starts to lose all sense of who he is and _why_ he is. His thinking gets slow, fuzzy, his frustration builds. It doesn't even take more than a few days before the aching muscles, the depression and the hallucinations start.

 

Of course the problem with this is by the time he's ready to talk not much of what he says makes sense.

 

Frank wonders if he’d make sense now.

 

He sees her in his bed, rising above him, hair a white blonde tangle in the dim light; she's in the hospital and he saying “stay please” and she's walking out the door without a backwards look; her body is under his and he's crushing her into the floor of her apartment while bullets tear up her walls and she's asking him why he couldn’t die there, why he had to carry on living and chipping away bits of her life until they committed that act of sin that they can't come back from. She's touching his face and telling him she loves him and she wants to save him.

 

He jolts himself out of his half sleep but it's no different from the dreams. All he can think about is her: where she is, what she's doing and who she's doing it with. And then he realises, thanks to Mr Hollis and his outrage, he can see it for himself.

 

If his life is going up in flames, the least he could do is watch it burn and make sure it's truly nothing but ashes.

 

Frank Castle has never been one not to look destiny in the eye and spit at its feet.

 

He checks his watch. It's 7:30. The yacht will pass by in an hour. He may as well put the last nail in this coffin.

 

He grabs his coat and his keys again, gets into his truck and heads off into the cold.

 

~~~

 

He's not sure what perverse pleasure makes him go back to the same spot on the river where he once brought her and fell even more in love with her than he already was.

 

He could say it's a good vantage point to see the yacht, but the truth is he likes the symmetry of it: going back to the middle or the end, or the beginning of the end as the case may be. It seems right. Fitting.

 

There's also something almost comforting about the chill, the lack of people. This time he drinks his coffee that he stopped to pick up from Pastry Hozier and doesn't let it fall into the river.

 

He wonders if she's counted back the days from today. If she remembers what happened a year ago in his bed. He doubts it - they’ve been at odds about what they remember since the night she showed up at his place with a confession and a bottle of whiskey. No reason things would be different now.

 

He sips his coffee as the yacht comes into sight. It’s lit up like one of those Christmas trees the city has only just taken down, all bright sparkling lights and sleek lines. It looks small from where he’s standing, small and insignificant. But it isn’t. She’s on it and it’s taking her away even as it brings her closer.

 

There’s a terrible wrenching in his chest and his empty gut roils. He wonders if he’ll sleep tonight but he already knows the answer. He won’t and it’ll have nothing to do with the coffee.

 

He should go home. There’s something profoundly sad and desperate about standing here like this. He’s lost so much more than just Karen Page before. He’s lost everything he held dear and again he thinks he should be better at it. He should know where to put the hurt and the loss and the rage. Except now it doesn’t feel like he has room for any more.

 

He crumples his coffee cup, tosses into a nearby trash can.

 

The yacht passes and continues its journey down the river.

 

_Goodbye Karen. Goodbye and I’m sorry._

 

He turns, takes a step away from the railing and that’s when he hears the first explosion crash through the frigid air.

 

~~~

 

_She's standing outside his door._

 

_She standing outside his door and the city is on fire._

 

_The drive here was both easier and harder than she expected. Easier because people seemed to be taking the message to stay inside to heart and there was almost no traffic at all. Harder because the driver tried to turn back no less than four times._

 

_It doesn't matter. She's here now._

 

_She looks down at herself. Maybe hospital scrubs and ugly shoes weren't exactly the kind of things she wanted to be wearing for a moment like this. But she's has his coat around her shoulders and something about that makes it okay. They never were people for putting on a show anyway._

 

_Except, she thinks wryly, they were. The last 12 months since the moment he took her into his bed have been a show. And finally it's time to lower the curtain._

 

_She raises her hand, takes a breath and raps sharply on the wood. She can hear movement inside and then the barely audible click of a hammer._

 

It's okay Frank, _she wants to say._ It's only me.

 

I'm standing outside your door and it's exactly where I should be.


	6. You can tell them all you stood and watched me burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So wow, I am actually finished this. Like it's done. To be fair it was never meant to be six chapters - it was meant to be three short and simple chapters that looked at memory and how it shapes who we think we are and how we react to things.
> 
> I guess in some ways it is that. It's just a little more now.
> 
> So, what to say really? Well firstly thank you all for your lovely reviews and kudos - they are what keep me going so please please please if you liked this let me know. Secondly, I hope the ending doesn't disappoint.
> 
> And then finally just a note on Be My Saviour. It's happening. It really is. I'm writing it right now. I have just been going through a tough time personally and my writing hit a dry patch but things seem to be working themselves out and I have got a bunch of new stuff planned, including a new fic as well.
> 
> Anyway, enough about that. Here is the last chapter of this thing. 
> 
> Thanks for all being so great about it.

She saves his life.

 

Frank's never been one to entertain suicidal thoughts. A deathwish, yes. A yearning to go out in a blaze of glory and just stop fighting, most assuredly.

 

But suicide? No.

 

He thinks if he managed to force himself to carry on breathing after he lost Maria and the kids then there isn't anything that would make him sit down and take his own life. Certainly not something as pedestrian as love.

 

And yet, Karen saves him all the same. Standing there in his coat, her hair stringy and still half wet from some horrible hospital shower and her eyes shimmering with tears, she rescues him in a way he didn't even know he needed.

 

It's easy to forget that sometimes the skull on his chest belongs to someone - some _thing_ \- other than Frank Castle. That its soulless eyes and dead smile are purely the domain of The Punisher. After all, it's gets very comfortable pretending that's all he is.

 

Avenging angel. _Memento mori._

 

Both those things.

 

And then her. Always her.

 

She saves his life.

 

His first thought is to give her hell.  

 

He's seen the news, he's had a front seat interactive experience with what's going on in Hell’s Kitchen. Even from this secluded hidey-hole where he lives he can hear the sirens and see the smoke hanging over the city. She should be inside. She should be hidden away where none of this badness can get to her again. He needs that for her, even if she doesn't need it for herself.

 

Suddenly he understands Murdock’s desire to wrap her up in cotton wool, to put her away and keep her safe from everything. Mainly from herself.

 

It's a bad thought and one he doesn't want to dwell on.

 

Either way, Frank Castle doesn't give Karen Page hell. Part of him simply doesn't want to, but a bigger more significant part doesn't have any hell left in him to give. Not even to her. He's too tired. He's too overwhelmed. His heart is heavy and weary and lying in pieces in his chest.

 

No, the only hell left is in Hell’s Kitchen and maybe that's how it should be.

 

So he holds the door open, and her eyes don't leave his as she steps inside. And despite the smell of hospital soap and detergent, he still catches a whiff of her scent as she walks past him and into his world. It's sweet and heady and for a moment he almost forgets himself. Almost.

 

But he knows he can't do that anymore. Once was enough. Once, and it led to all this. Who knows where it would lead if he did it again.

 

The door clicks shut and he locks it behind him, looks down at the gun still in his hand.

 

He really has turned into a paranoid motherfucker.

 

She notices too.

 

“Mine is in the river somewhere,” she says and he nods. “Seems like that is where all my guns go,” she adds dryly.

 

“You're gonna need to replace it,” he doesn't look at her.

 

“I will.”

 

“I know.”

 

He goes to the kitchen, puts his gun on the counter island. He doesn't bother to ask if she wants anything. He opens the cupboard, pulls out the bottle of whiskey she left behind a year ago, and pours a generous amount into two glasses. The liquid is amber like the sky outside and he knows it will burn him when he drinks it. Something about that feels very appropriate.

 

She watches him closely and he knows it can't possibly be real but he swears he feels her eyes drilling holes into the back of his head.

 

It doesn't mean anything though. He's beyond both judgment or pity. Hers or his own.

 

He turns, slides her drink along the Formica to rest next to his gun. She doesn't say anything as she reaches for it, hand brushing the barrel. He’s not too tired to appreciate the picture it makes. Whiskey and gunmetal. Karen Page’s slim fingers wrapping around the glass. It feels like a nice little snapshot of her and it makes him wonder what his would look like. Guns, blood, graves and emptiness. He can't even feel sad about it. He has only himself to blame. This is what he gets when he loses focus. This is the kind of hurt that lies on the other side of Maria. This is why he should never have allowed any of this drama between him and Karen to happen. This is why he should never have asked her to stay all those months ago in that hospital room.

 

This is why she should have never said yes … to that and to everything else.

 

He realises now that there are only bad things. Only bad. And even when there is something good it only endures so long before it turns bad as well.

 

Everything dies. Everything rots.

 

So he drinks and she does too. And for a long time neither of them say anything and he feels no need to break the silence between them. Apparently that's also been taken from him.

 

Outside there are sirens in the air and a low roar that tells him the city is still awake. But inside he feels removed from it all. He always believed the world would end with an explosion and then a whimper. He was as right as he was wrong.

 

After a few sips and an indeterminate amount of time she puts her half empty glass down and takes off his coat, drapes it over the counter and, as she does, he hears a faint beep from the pocket that he identifies as being Curtis’ unread text message from yesterday. He ignores it and stares across the kitchen at her.

 

She's wearing a sweater and the same scrubs as before when he saw her at the hospital. Faded and ill fitting. Ugly even. But she looks beautiful. That's not even a surprise and somewhere that pisses him off. After what she's been through she could at least not do that. She could at least look like someone who nearly died. Then again, he's pretty sure it's just him and his inability to see her as anything less than magnificent.

 

“Can we sit?” she asks eventually.

 

He glances at her, makes a dismissive gesture at the couch.

 

_Do what you like. I never had a say in any of this._

 

She purses her lips.

 

“I mean, will you sit with me Frank?”

 

He shrugs. He doesn't have the energy to analyse this. He's not even sure if he knows how.

 

So sure, sure he’ll sit with her. He can't hurt any more than he already does. Apparently there's a tipping point even for him.

 

He picks up his drink, then reconsiders and takes the bottle as well, and follows her to the couch, lowers himself onto the cushions. His book from the previous night is still on the coffee table and she glances at it, touches the spine briefly before pulling her hand back.

 

“You cold?” he asks unnecessarily and she shakes her head. He pushes the pilling throw towards her anyway and he thinks it's more of an attempt to create a barrier between them than any real concern for her comfort.

 

She does too, because she immediately discards it on the floor, sets her almost empty glass down on the coffee table and looks at him expectantly.

 

He doesn't know why though. He has nothing. His defeat is absolute. Whatever she thinks she's doing here is both unnecessary and cruel.

 

Still, he holds her gaze, waits for her to speak and when she doesn't he shrugs again, takes a sip of his whiskey and feels its searing heat curling in his belly. May as well set himself on fire from the inside too. Go big or go home.

 

“Frank…”

 

“Dangerous coming out tonight,” he interrupts. “Should have waited for tomorrow.”

 

If he'd hoped to catch her off guard, he failed. She doesn't miss a beat, doesn't even take a second to pick her words.

 

“I’ve waited long enough,” she says. “I couldn't leave things the way they were.”

 

He considers this, wonders what she means by “the way they were” and then sighs deeply, slouches back on the couch, stares at the ceiling. His muscles ache and there's a dull thudding in his head like someone's punching him from the inside and making his skull rattle around in his skin. If he concentrates too long on any one thing in his apartment it starts to fall apart, fixed shapes becoming loose and colours rippling.

 

His eyes are as heavy as his heart.

 

She clears her throat. “I realised after you left that you were right … about almost everything.”

 

He can't. He can't do this. Not again. He shifts, pushes himself back up so that he's sitting properly.

 

“You don't need to explain anything to me Karen,” he says. “It’s done.”

 

“It’s not done Frank,” her voice is mostly level but she isn't quite able to remove that faint hint of pleading from it. “It’s _not_.”

 

He decides to cut himself off at the knees.

 

“Feels pretty done to me.”

 

Her expression changes then. It goes from a concerned frown into something that looks like the beginnings of mild hysteria, eyes widening and nostrils flaring. He thinks this might have been how he looked when he spoke to her before, that moment he realised things weren't going to be easy and she wasn't going to just forgive him and take him back, no questions asked.

 

“Frank please…”

 

And yes, there it is. This is exactly how he sounded too: the confidence which fades and allows the worry to seep in; the worry then giving way to panic. She just has to get to the point when she realises that defeat is the only way to progress from this point.

 

It's not a great conclusion.

 

He knocks back what's left of his drink without tasting it, pours himself another, downs that one as well.

 

Whiskey and tears. Tears and whiskey. And things falling apart. That's what they've always been about.

 

“You tried to talk to me,” she’s saying. “I should have listened…”

 

“Stop it,” he says firmly. “You're better than this Karen.”

 

“No,” she shakes her head. “That's not how it is. I said things Frank… terrible things that I never should have said…” a gulp and then a low whisper. “Lies.”

 

No. No they weren't lies. Not exactly. They were truths that felt too hard to hear so they just sounded like lies.

 

He finds the exact terminology still means something to him.

 

“Don't do this,” he says. “Just don't.”

 

“I have to.”

 

It’s true. She does. He can see it written all over her face and he hates it. He thinks this might be the most awful conversation they've ever had. Worse even than yesterday, worse than that stupid stilted thing they'd had after he'd taken her to bed and before he did it again.

 

It's awful and it settles into his bones like poison.

 

“Frank…”

 

And somewhere inside he finds some small kernel of anger, something just fiery enough to put some force into his voice.

 

“No. You break my heart and that's fine. I ain't afraid to admit it. You did and it's a fucking mess but broken hearts are a dime a dozen. That’s on me yeah? It ain't your problem. I hurt you too. No one escapes that. But you don't get to use me to feel better about yourself now,” he takes a deep breath, gulps his whiskey and grimaces before banging his glass on the table. “You own it Karen. You own what you did and I'll own what I did.”

 

Again, he’s acutely aware that he doesn't fight fair, that he has a way of backing people into corners and giving them only bad ways to get back out. So he expects some kind of fiery comeback, something to put him in his place. The truth is he's hoping for it.

 

But she's never been one do things by the book either. She's never been one to shy away from flipping the script.

 

She cocks her head, stares at him for so long he almost gives in and looks away. Maria used to do that and, while Karen and Maria are so different he's almost surprised at himself for having fallen in love with both of them, they do share the ability to pull the world out from under him and knock him on his ass.

 

And he guesses that, alongside a frightening honesty and a goodness he could never hope to match, is all he's ever needed to turn him into a lovesick puppy with no hope of recovery. He likes it. There's a part of him that even thrives in it. Killing a hundred men is easy. Looking at Karen Page is the hardest thing he's ever done and he wants to fall to his knees and thank her for it.

 

He doesn't though. Not yet anyway.

 

“You think that's why I'm here?” she asks. “You think I'm here to ask for forgiveness?”

 

“Ain't like you haven't done that before.”

 

_(I shot him seven times Frank. What kind of a person does that?)_

 

She could at least have the good sense to look slightly shamed. He knows it would make him feel worse but she could at least try. She doesn't though. She just nods.

 

“I'm not doing it now.”

 

And Jesus fucking Christ she doesn't make this easy.

 

“Then what are you doing Karen? What are you doing? Yesterday you're telling me you're confused and this thing is better left alone and you're with Murdock. You’re telling me I'm not in love with you and I'm just a lonely husband without a wife and now you're here in the middle of the night when you should be in the hospital with the man you love.

 

“So you tell me Karen. What am I supposed to think? Because I wasn't confused before but now I am.”

 

He's aware that his voice has risen, that that edge is back and it's hard and sharp and he finds he's grateful for it. It tells him he's not entirely broken; she hasn't completely annihilated him.

 

But maybe she's still going to. She has a way Karen Page does.

 

She sucks on her bottom lip and looks down at her fingers. Her nail polish is a pale nude colour and he tries not to let himself get distracted by the fine lines of her hands as she takes a sip of her whiskey. He's mildly successful.

 

When she finishes her drink he pushes the bottle towards her but she shakes her head, swallows hard, and he knows she's about to tug the world out from under him.

 

“I didn't sleep last night,” she begins.

 

“Yeah, that makes two of us.”

 

She ignores him. “I haven't slept properly for a long time, but last night was the worst. I kept thinking about everything… the things I said. The things you said… the things we _did_.”

 

She looks at him then, eyes hard and pinning him to the couch. He knows what she means. He knows _exactly_ what she means. It's not even _that_ night. It's everything that came before and everything that came after. It's the hospital and the diner. It's Schoonover. It's the night she told him what she did to that piece of shit working for Fisk and the night he took her to the river and confessed his love over apple pie and praline pastries.

 

It's them, and how no matter how hard they try they never seem to be able to extricate themselves from each other.

 

“You were right,” she says simply. “It's not complicated. It's not complicated at all.”

 

She always has been good at kicking his ass. Usually she does it with truth, now she's doing it with hope. And hope is a very dangerous thing. So dangerous that he can't have it. Not in his home. Not in his life.

 

He stands, bumps the table and knocks his empty glass over. He has no idea where he's going or what he's going to do. All he knows is he needs to put some distance between the two of them; that he can't look at her eyes anymore and he can't sit there imagining what she'd feel like in his hands.

 

The colours in the apartment seem to bleed into each other and for a second he feels dizzy as he waits for his mind to catch up with his body. He wonders how noticeable his fatigue is and if he looks as bad as he feels.

 

But lack of sleep isn't an excuse. It won't get him out of this. He doesn't get a reprieve.

 

He doesn't deserve one.

 

“Don't play with me Karen.” His voice is low, harsh, an infinitesimally small hint of warning lurking in the gravel.

 

She doesn’t bother to acknowledge it. He doesn't know why he thought it could go any other way.

 

“I'm not.”

 

He huffs, rolls his eyes, makes a sound that he hopes comes off as derisive.

 

She's not fooled though. She gets up and walks around the couch towards him and he has the distinct impression of a lioness stalking its prey. But he's not prey. He's not. Because at the end of it all, this is what he's wanted for as long as he can remember.

 

She stands in front of him, fingers twitching at her sides like she's unsure. And then, seemingly making up her mind, she bites her lip and leans forward, puts her hands on his biceps.

 

It sends a delightful shiver through him but if she notices she doesn't show it.

 

“Frank, I would never…”

 

“But you are,” he whispers, looking away. “You _are_.”

 

He says it more for himself than for her. Because that stupid spark of hope is so hard to extinguish. Because he can't stop himself from clinging to the idea that maybe - just _maybe_ \- this time she isn't here to break his heart.

 

She frowns and then squeezes his arms, rubs her thumbs over the bulges of his muscles and he shivers again. She's has a way of turning him into a quivering mess. Some nasty words and a betrayal or two don't change that.

 

He wants to touch her too and that's a really fucking bad idea but he wants to do it all the same. He wants to put his hands on her hips, her shoulders, her face. He wants to bury his face in her neck and sob all the badness out, but he knows if he does any of those things he's lost.

 

But maybe being lost isn't such a bad thing.

 

“Why are you trying to push me away?” she asks gently. “What's changed since last night?”

 

_Nothing. Everything. You. Me. It's all different and it's all exactly the same. I left. You did too._

 

He sighs again, looks at her for a good few seconds before he speaks.

 

“You nearly died,” he says.

 

“But I didn't. You saved me.”

 

“Yeah,” he nods. “And now you feel grateful. I got to be that white knight for an hour and now you're feeling guilty and you need to find a way to live with yourself, so you're doing this.”

 

It should hurt her. He wants it to. He wants her to feel it like he does. It should shock her as well. He is, after all, sharing his heart and his truth. But she just shakes her head, purses her lips.

 

“Come on Frank, you know me better than that.”

 

Maybe. Maybe once. He's not sure now.

 

_(You're a lonely, grieving husband without a wife)_

 

She's closer now, lips inches from his and he wonders if he could just take a chance and pull her to him and kiss her; cover that pretty mouth with his own and end this conversation and just leave the rest to fate. Maybe she'd kiss him back. Maybe she'd leave. He's not sure in which one of those scenarios he wins.

 

But he doesn't do it.

 

On a fundamental level he gets that there's no fast forward button on this, the only way out is through and trying to circumvent that is only going to make things worse.

 

And they should know. They've done this whole thing backwards and ended up here.

 

So he decides to give her more truth. He decides to let her climb deeper inside him than she already has.

 

“And you should have known me better than that too,” he says. “You should know me better than to think I wouldn't be sure about something like this. Like you. That I'd tell you I love you and not mean it. That I'd be confused about it.”

 

There it is. There _he_ is. Lost. Vulnerable. Hurt. Showing her everything he has to show.

 

_(No Frank, I don't think you love me at all)_

 

For the first time since she walked through his door she looks slightly shamed. On some level it feels like a victory. On another it's a staggering defeat.

 

“You’re right. I should have never said the things I did. I was wrong and you would never… and it wasn't fair. I know that now.”

 

And no no no, she shouldn't be agreeing with him. Not now. The time for that has passed and she fucked it up and he can't let her try and turn back the clock.

 

“No you don't,” he says. “You think you do but you don't.”

 

It's mean and patronising but she's been mean and patronising and he guesses on some level they both give as good as they get.

 

She's not feeling so charitable though and something flares in her eyes and her hands tighten painfully on his arms.

 

“Damnit Frank. I was doing the easy thing. I was doing the thing that hurts the least. Because you _hurt_ me. Because when you left it was like everything fell apart. I lost my best friend, I lost my rock, I lost whatever it was I thought we could have one day, whatever we had before,” she looks away but doesn't let go. “I'm not saying it's the same as what happened to you, but you … _you_ of all people should be able to appreciate how that feels,” she swallows a sob. “And then there you were back out of nowhere and saying all the things I've wanted you to say. All the things I feel too, but you were acting like the last four months didn't matter, like what you did didn't matter.  And then there was Matt and you and…”

 

“Okay okay,” he says.

 

But it's not okay. It's not okay at all because she always has a way of flipping these things around and doing the one thing he never anticipated her doing and fucking it all up in the process. And before he can say anything else she launches herself forward, hands sliding from his arms up his shoulders and cupping his face, forcing him to look at her.

 

“For Christ's sake, do you remember what happened a year ago Frank? Do you remember? In this apartment? In that bed? Do you? Because I do. Because it’s always there and it gets worse the more we pretend d it isn't. Because whatever happens, that’s something we can't undo.”

 

Another shiver, this one all the way through him, spiralling out from his spine and along his veins. He didn't really ever think she'd bring that up as bluntly as she has. He thought she'd confined it all away to that place where she locks things up if they hurt too much. And maybe she did. They've both spent the last year trying to forget it and sometimes, briefly, they were successful.

 

But not now. Apparently now she wants to shake all the horrors out of Pandora’s box and wait and see if there's any hope left at the bottom.

 

That’s not a chance he's willing to take.

 

It's just too much. _She's_ too much.

 

He covers one of her hands with his own and deliberately takes it away from his face.

 

“Don't Karen,” he says. “Don't open a door you can't close.”

 

She shakes her head and her eyes shimmer.

 

“Already did. We both did. Come on Frank, you _know_ that.”

 

He does.

 

“Goddamnit…”

 

“You remember?”

 

She always knew just how to hurt him.

 

“Oh Jesus Christ Karen, of course I fucking remember. Of course I do…”

 

He pulls away completely then, stumbles over his own feet as he moves. The pounding in his head is loud and painful and he can barely keep his eyes open.

 

She follows him, hands reaching for his but somehow not making contact as he moves away, and she lets her arms fall to her sides.

 

And then she does what she does best and she destroys him. She climbs inside him and chops his heart to pieces and she heals it in her own way, molds him into what she wants.

 

“I don't want to wait another year Frank. I've waited long enough. So have you.”

 

_So have you._

 

His breath catches in his throat and he tastes whiskey.

 

“No, Karen…”

 

“Come on Frank…”

 

“You said it was a mistake…”

 

She did. She did say that and now all he wants to do is throw it back at her and remind her of that. Tell her she can't just change her fucking mind like she wants.

 

But she's Karen Page and she can.

 

“I was wrong. People who aren't in love don't make mistakes like that Frank. They don't _fuck_ like that. You know it.”

 

He does. Oh god he does. Because they don't. They just don't.

 

And then, because she's apparently now busy breaking the world apart and the hell that is Hell’s Kitchen has decided to help her out with that, there's a muted blast from outside followed almost immediately by literally everything in the universe going quiet. Everything except her. And she's the loudest thing he's ever heard.

 

“I love you,” she says. “I do.”

 

It should feel like a punch in the gut. Something sharp and focused and designed to cause specific pain to a specific place. That's how it felt the first time Maria said it: exquisite agony followed by instant euphoria.  

 

But this... This doesn't feel like that at all. This feels like he's been chewed up and spat out, like someone's taken a baseball bat to his body and beaten him with it everywhere at once until his skin is a bloodied mess and his innards are lying all over the floor.

 

There's no euphoria either. There's no sudden rush of endorphins to mask the hurt.

 

And he realises that this is how it feels when the Punisher is loved.

 

The sound he makes is strangled and feral, not quite a sob, not a growl either. It's some weird hybrid of hope and utter despair. He's not even slightly embarrassed by it, nor by the wetness on his cheeks or that terrible rage in his heart.

 

He looks back at her. She hasn't moved. She's just standing there in her ugly scrubs, waiting for him to decide what to do.

 

And he does. He's not even sure it's a conscious decision. It's more a sudden instinctual need to be with her, to touch her, to stop the torture and find the kind of peace only she provides.

 

She's here. She's here now in his space which she claimed for her own, and she wants him and he wants her and it's all he's ever thought about since the last time they made this very specific situation together, and he can't carry on pretending it's not.

 

He's held it together too long to be able to stop the breaking now.

 

“Jesus Christ Karen,” he says under his breath as he goes to her, snaps a hand around her wrist and all but drags her into his arms. “Jesus Christ.”

 

There's a second she freezes. He processes a lot in that second. He could have misread this. He could just be fucking wrong about every goddamn thing in the fucking universe. She could have realised too late what the words mean and could be trying to swallow them. There's a chance he's not going to get that eternity to breathe in her scent and press his face into that curve of her shoulder. There's a chance she doesn't want to be in his arms.

 

And he might have to let her go.

 

Again.

 

None of these things are true. None of them happen. But something else does.

 

He could say she relaxes against him but that isn't accurate because it's not truly what it is. She unfreezes, that's for certain. But it's not to slump and soften in his arms. Quite the opposite really.

 

Instead she grabs at him and she's not gentle and it’s not sweet. She's hard and angry and her nails dig into him like claws, snagging on his skin as she pulls at him like he's some kind of lifeline.

 

He has the sense to think she's got that the wrong way around too. He's not life. Not in any way. He's hurt and pain and rage. He's death. _Memento Mori._

 

She saves his life.

 

But maybe in some small way he saves hers.

 

He’s aware that she's crying. It's not loud or violent but her shoulders are shaking and her body is trembling as she pushes and pulls at him.

 

And a good man might hate that he's done this and part of him truly truly does. But he was never all good. So there's a part of him that loves it too. He wants to revel in it, bask in the knowledge that he fucks her up as much as she does him and, at the same time, he wants to carve it out of himself and burn it, and never ever do anything that hurts her again.

 

He always was a mess of contradictions.

 

So was she.

 

And he needs that. He needs her hardness and her cruelty. He needs it as much as he needs her sweetness and her love.

 

_(Cut my heart out and stamp on it. Feed that shit to a dog)_

 

_Maria. Oh dear sweet god Maria._

 

But Maria isn't here and she shouldn't be either. This place isn't for her. The Punisher isn't for her. He never could be.

 

“I'm not confused,” Karen says against his skin and he can feel the scrape of her teeth on his shoulder, nails leaving welts on his back through his shirt. “I'm not confused about this. I'm not confused about who you are.”

 

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

 

It’s not enough. It isn't enough to just know.

 

If he thought she was done he was wrong.She's still all rage - all anger and sharp edges, and arms so strong around him he thinks she might break his bones - but he's just as bad. He crushes her to him, squeezing her so hard he hears her breath rattling in her chest. He claws at her too, fingernails scraping over her shoulder blades, teeth snapping at her throat like a feral dog that would die rather than draw blood but has to try all the same.

 

Either way he knows in that moment that nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing for her and nothing for him.

 

And then, as if he flicked a switch that took the fight right out of them both, she does soften, properly this time, her hands going still and body leaning heavily on his.

 

She says his name and it sounds like a prayer.

 

He realises it always has.

 

And somewhere, as he slumps against her too, he feels that first hint of relief and the pain inside him is bearable again. And even though he's not given to esoteric explanations for pretty much anything - he's seen too much death and blood for that - he does wonder if it's because maybe they're carrying the load together. Maybe he's taking on some of her burdens and she's doing the same for him. Maybe that terrible void inside both of them doesn't have to be so terrible.

 

Face buried in her hair, hands pressed into her spine, he loses track of how long they stay like that. But some things aren't meant to be measured in seconds and minutes. Some things aren't meant to be measured at all.

 

They sway. He knows they sway. He feels how she shifts in his arms and winds herself around him like she's trying to hold every part of him at once. He moves with her and he knows he doesn't have enough apologies to make up for any of the harm he's done or the loneliness he's caused, but maybe she can let him try. There's something comforting about being forever indebted to Karen Page; something real and raw about being so far deep in the red that he hopes never to be in the black again.

 

She saves his life. Maybe he saves hers.

 

And he wouldn't change it for the world.

 

And when it’s time he surfaces slowly, becoming aware of little things: the sirens outside; the din from the city that hasn't died down; the exhaustion in his bones and her hair still damp against his nose and mouth.

 

The bigger things follow: his tears drying on her skin; her body soft and warm and the way she's burrowed into him until he's not really sure where she starts and he ends.

 

Not that he's ever known. Not that it matters either way.

 

He's the first one to speak and he doesn't care that he sounds weak and frightened. That he's begging.

 

“Don't leave me again,” he says. “Please.”

 

“I won't,” she says. “You don't either.”

 

He won't. He promises he won't. He whispers it into her hair and even though he's as guilty as one man could ever be, she takes him at his word.

 

There's another explosion outside. It's very far away but it reverberates through the room, sending the almost empty whiskey bottle rolling off the table and onto the floor.

 

Neither of them say anything - something as negligible as fires in Hell’s Kitchen don't seem worth the effort of words - but she does press closer to him and he does rock them both from side to side.

 

She's gentle now, hands rubbing at his shoulders, lips pressing not-quite-kisses into his skin. Apparently being close like this, melded to each other with his arms so tight around her that he knows he should be squeezing the life out of her, has somehow given her room to breathe.

 

He doesn't understand it and he doesn't want to either. All he cares about is that she's here and she's alive and they're not hurting each other anymore.

 

It feels so good just to not hurt.

 

And then she's hushing him and he realises he's crying again. He's not sure why. It could be for her, for them. It could be for Maria and the children he buried and how it feels like they’re letting him go.

 

Mainly though, he thinks it's for himself.

 

When he lifts his head from her shoulder to look at her, she takes his face in her hands, ghosts her thumbs over his cheekbones. He reaches up, holds her fingers in his and brings them to his mouth.

 

“I love you,” he says for the second time in as many days.

 

“I know and I know what that means.”

 

“Do you?”

 

_Do you really Karen? Because sometimes I don't even think I do._

 

She nods.

 

“I do. And I know it's not going to be easy and I'm not going to promise you that it's all going to be okay… but I get it. I get you and I get us and I don't want it to be anyone else who does this for you…” For a second she looks almost embarrassed but then she meets his gaze and her eyes are hard.“I don't want it to be anyone else doing this for me either… I mean... I don't think anyone else could...”

 

He hears a choked sound coming from somewhere and it takes a second before he realises it was him.

 

And that’s when she touches his jaw and tilts her head and, with all the tenderness in the world, brushes her lips on his. It's quick and it's chaste and, more than anything, he knows it's her seeing if she can - if she _dares_ \- but it changes everything.

 

And he can't help himself anymore. Because somewhere in all the rage and the bloodshed, what he really wants is to be weak.

 

“Please Karen,” he whispers as she rolls back on her heels. “Please.”

 

The truth is he doesn't even know what he's asking for anymore. It could be her, it could be redemption. It could just be sleep.

 

She gives him all three.

 

She takes his hand and leads him into his bedroom, leaves him standing there in the middle of the floor as she draws the curtains.

The walls shimmer and disintegrate and the carpet swims under his feet. His whole body aches and he can't say whether it's desire or deprivation causing it. He thinks it might be both. He thinks it doesn't matter either way.

 

She comes back to him, lingers for a second like she's unsure and maybe he has the answers.

 

He doesn't. He doesn't have anything.

 

Except he does.

 

He lifts his hand to her face, runs his knuckles down her cheek.

 

“Please,” he says again and she nods like she understands and he's given her something to work with.

 

And then her fingers curl around the hem of his Henley and she drags it and his undershirt over his head, drops it all into a messy heap on the floor, kicks it away.

 

Her eyes flicker to his very briefly but then her gaze strays to his shoulders and chest, down to his abdomen and then lower to where he's already straining against his jeans.

 

And sure they've done this before and sure this is Karen and he trusts her with this but he can't help the spike of self-consciousness he feels. Embarrassment even.

 

There's no need.

 

She sucks in a ragged breath and her eyes gleam, tongue flicking out and sweeping across her lips as gives him a small tight smile and reaches for the buttons on her sweater, pushes them through the holes one by one.

 

“Karen,” he says. “Hey. What are we doing?”

 

He doesn't want to assume. He doesn't. This is all so backwards and mixed up and they've never been platonic since the first day they met and they're under each other's skin and it's just best to be clear and _oh god… Be bold, my girl, be bold._

 

She is.

 

“What we should have been doing for a year now.”

 

They don't talk much after that.

 

Her sweater joins his clothes on the floor, followed by her ugly faded scrubs top. She's not wearing a bra and even though he was pretty sure he already knew this - that it pinged somewhere in his tired mind when she took off his coat - he groans at the sight of her.

 

She half ignores it. Half. Not quite. He doesn't miss how her fingers flutter as she struggles with the tie of her pants, nor the gooseflesh on her skin despite the relative warmth of his bedroom. He also doesn't miss the subtle way she angles herself so that her breasts are thrust forward and her back arches.

 

His cock twitches painfully against his zip and he swears under his breath although he has no idea which curse it is that he uses.

 

Another sudden loss of focus. Body screaming for sleep but screaming louder for her. She glistens in front of him, snaps in and out of existence, and then suddenly she’s naked as the day she was born, not even a stitch of clothing to hide behind.

 

Not that she's hiding. Not that she ever really has. Maybe once. Maybe once - a day or a lifetime ago. He doesn't remember. It was never important anyway.

 

His blood pounds in his ears and it feels like his heart is being tied up with steel strings; minute razor sharp hooks cutting through meat and tissue and tearing him apart viciously.

 

It's bliss. It should be anything else but it's not.

 

“Look at me,” she whispers.

 

“I am.”

 

_Always. Right from the beginning._

 

She’s something more than beautiful. More than golden hair and eyes that glitter hard like sapphires. More than the pale milky skin that seems almost luminous in the strange Hell's Kitchen light that's streaming into his bedroom. More than those soft breasts with their pink nipples and blue veins, those long coltish legs which are slim and fine but also muscular and strong.

 

Always more.

 

The real devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Or. Maybe. The Angel. He wasn't wrong when he thought that down by the river. He's not wrong now either.

 

Whatever she is, he’s hers. And that’s not the fatigue speaking, it’s not that crushing weight of sleeplessness that’s burrowed itself so deep in his body he doesn’t remember what it’s like to feel rested anymore. It’s just truth, fundamental and undeniable. He’s hers. He always was.

 

He snakes a hand around the back of her neck, fingers gripping at her hair as he pulls her face towards his.

 

She doesn't resist but she doesn't exactly help him either and he has to use a certain degree of strength to draw her in. And when his forehead is touching hers he knows he's truly lost. He knows he never stood a chance. She's had him one way or another since the first day he met her and, if not for Maria and the vengeance and rage shaking around in his bones like some kind of possession that he wasn't sure was good or bad, maybe things would have been easier.

 

Then again, maybe not. Maybe Karen Page needed The Punisher as much as Frank Castle did.

 

Outside a police cruiser races past, briefly bathing them both in red and blue light.

 

 _Go_ , he thinks. _Go save the city. I'm busy saving myself._

 

But he isn’t.

 

She is. She always was.

 

He’s trembling and he closes his eyes because it hurts too much to look at her. It hurts too much to even think about her.

 

“I’ll stay,” she says.

 

He chokes back any words he might have had into his dry throat and, hand fisting harder in her hair, he nods and takes a moment to just let himself figure out how much she's left of him after that.

 

It's not a lot. And that's okay.

 

He realises in pretty much every way that counts she's harder and tougher than he is and that’s how it should be.

 

Love, after all, is pain.

 

So he grips her hair tighter, fist heavy on her skull, free hand gliding down her arm until he has her by the wrist and she gasps as his fingers bite into her skin.

 

He’s holding her too hard. Tomorrow there's going to be a bracelet of bruises on her arm in the shape of his fingers. He knows this. But he also knows her.

 

And then, as if to confirm his thoughts, she breathes in sharply and he feels a delicate little shiver - a _frisson_ \- meander through her. Her skin prickles, millions of tiny little bumps rising on her flesh, nipples pebbling hard where they brush his chest.

 

He can smell her too, something dark and heady and sweet, a faint earthy muskiness and he knows that if he let go of her hair now and dropped his hand between her legs she'd be slick and hot, wetness dripping down her thighs.

 

He groans at the thought, grits his teeth, and he twists his fist harder against her scalp until her neck is a perfect arch and her pelvis touches his.

 

It hurts and she burns and he doesn't want to change either of these things. He wants to hold her and touch her and stand here with her like this stretching this moment for as long as he can. He wants to imprint every single separate element of it into his brain and never ever lose a second of it. Her breath on his face, her scent in the air and the silk of her hair. Her eyes. Her eyes like jewels and the alabaster smoothness of her skin, the wetness of her lips and his heart beating so hard it feels like it’s trying to break out of his ribcage.

 

But, much like her, it's too much. Some things aren't meant to be remembered with that kind of precision. Some things are meant to be experienced and lived.

 

And then she licks her lips. And he's weak. He doesn't know why he ever tried to be anything else.

 

When he kisses her, he’s clumsier than he thought he would be. Her mouth is too soft and his is too hard and when he catches her bottom lip between his teeth she lets out a little yelp and he tastes blood.

 

“Sorry,” he whispers but she isn't listening. Despite his vicelike grip in her hair she's surging towards him, a little white hot flame under his hands as she's licks her way deep into his mouth.

 

She tastes like something clean and savage, and he lurches forward, hand sliding out of her hair to grip both her wrists and hold them behind her back. He’s not sure if he’s holding her like this more for her or for him, if it’s to force himself to keep things controlled and not try and touch her everywhere at once, or if it’s something else. If he needs her as weak and useless under his hands as he is under hers.

 

But even pinned like this she's neither weak nor useless. She might not have the strength but her words were always more than enough to defeat him.

 

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she whispers between kisses. “I love you and I’m never letting you go.”

 

The feeling is exquisite. So is she.

 

“Never letting you go either,” he says as he nuzzles her jaw, buries his face in her neck. “Never letting it happen again.”

 

“Promise?” she asks. And yes, these might be whiskey confessions. These might be the kind of lust addled sweet nothings that feel good to say and aren’t meant to be taken seriously, but they’ve made a vow not to lie and he won’t break it.

 

He stops kissing her abruptly, lifts his head, looks her straight in the eye and for a long moment the pain is gone.

 

“I promise,” he says. “Know that.”

 

She does.

 

~~~

 

He takes her to bed. No, it’s not like that, even if it is.

 

He lays her down in his sheets, hair fanned across his pillows and, naked, he slides in next to her. When he reaches for the blankets to cover her, she pushes them away. He guesses some things shouldn’t be hidden from the world.

 

And then her hands are gentle on his face, fingertips running over his lips and jaw.

 

He turns his head and kisses her palm. Like he thought there are faint bruises on her wrist but they're his. They're hers.

 

She’s soft too. Softer than he remembers and he wonders how he lost that knowledge in the past year. It’s not important. He can learn again and she can teach him. He always was a quick study.

 

Her kisses are gentle and slow and he tries so hard to match them with his own, to keep his urgency simmering just below the surface and not take things further than they need to go.

 

But they do go far. They go so far and not nearly far enough. And something tells him that's how it’s meant to be.

 

They lie tangled up in each other, her naked body slotting next to his. He’s hard and his cock throbs almost painfully against her belly. He wants her more than he’s ever wanted anyone in his whole life. He doesn’t feel guilty.

 

Instead he watches her in the dim light, lets his eyes travel across the lines of her jaw to the slope of her neck, the hard notches of her collarbones and the soft swells of her breasts, the dip of her waist. Her skin is smooth like porcelain and the lights from the police cruisers from outside play across her belly and thighs, following the sweep of his hand as he traces the shape of her.

 

Palm glancing off her hip, fingers finding the knobs of her spine and pressing into her. She shivers, rolls her body into his and there it is. That steel, that singular hardness that belies the rest of her, that piece of her that he sees in the blue of her eyes, the set of her jaw.

 

It’s also the reason he loves her.

 

Hand dropping low, tracing the curve of her ass and then lower to caress the soft skin of her inner thigh. Like he thought, she’s hot there, her skin slippery under his fingers. He slides his palm upwards, until his knuckles rest a fraction of an inch from her centre. She's all tensed muscle and damp heat and when he runs his fingers over her they come away wet and shiny. He doesn't linger but she breathes in sharply, lays a kiss on his brow, another on his temple. Her fingers draw spirals on his shoulders, digging into the bones and the flesh, the scars, and making him want to weep.

 

“God...”

 

No, not God. This has nothing to do with God.

 

He presses at her a second time, thumb slicking across her clit and she arches her hips to him.

 

“Frank...” she whispers.

 

“I have everything,” he rasps against her neck.

 

Red neon lights across her skin again. Then blue.

 

Outside Hell’s Kitchen goes up in flames, inside he rises from the ashes.

 

“It’s you,” he says “Only you.”

 

“I believe you.”

 

He could make her come. It would be so easy. She's never was all that hard to please. And it's all he's been thinking about one way or another since he did it the first time.

 

He doesn't though. He explores her with his hands, leaving glistening trails of her wetness on her skin as his fingers move over her abdomen and belly to her sharp hipbones, then her ribs, her breasts.

 

His mouth finds hers again. He's less worried about his clumsiness now. She doesn't seem to care and he knows if he was thinking about this in terms of skill, she’d be scoring low as well. It makes no difference. All he wants is to just be here with her like this. Wholly hers with nothing between them.

 

And that's exactly what happens.

 

It's an eternity of hands and fingers, tongues and teeth as he touches her and she touches him back. Knuckles dragging along her cheek, mouth on her breasts, fingertips stroking slowly along his cock and lips to his throat.

 

It should be too much. It should be much too much but it isn't. Despite the white hot heat between his legs that feels like a aching wound and the heavy wet smell of her in the air; despite her small gasps and his low groans against her skin, he holds himself in check.

 

And they burn. Sometimes it's so good to burn.

 

But finally he has one hand wrapped around the back of her knee, the other resting in her hair. Her eyes are enormous but all he cares about is her mouth, lips parted and slicked with saliva, his and hers.

 

There's a moment when it almost happens. He imagines hoisting her leg over his hip, insinuating himself between her thighs and having her soft and slow while the exhaustion seeps through his blood and bones.

 

It would be wonderful. It would be languid and dreamy and the lack of urgency would take the edge off. But it doesn't happen. Like so many things now isn't the time.

 

She lifts a hand to his face, traces the cut on his cheek, the bump on his nose and then she leans up and presses her lips to his. She tastes like whiskey, sweet and spicy, and he holds her there cupping the back of her head while he covers her mouth.

 

“Stay,” he says. “Please stay.”

 

She nods solemnly and then she's settling herself down on his pillows, running her hand across his shoulder to his chest where she rests it over his heart.

 

“Sleep.” She wraps an arm around him, tugs him down so that his head is on her breast and her fingers are scratching slow circles into his scalp. “Its okay. I've got you.”

 

She does. She always has.

 

He collapses into her and she touches her lips to his hair and he doesn't remember anything else after that.

 

~~~

 

She's gone when he wakes up. She's left nothing but an indentation and some cooling sheets; the smell of her hair on his pillow.

 

He rolls himself up, panic settling into his bones. He doesn't know if she's left or if she was never there at all and his fatigued mind was just playing him for the fool he is.

 

But he knows that's not right. Even in this semi-conscious state, he realises he feels well, rested even. His body isn't aching and his eyes aren't heavy. It's an entirely unfamiliar feeling.

 

He glances towards his window. It's light outside but he can tell that it's still early. But he doesn't care about the time. He doesn't care about the light either.

 

She's there, standing with her hands on the sill and looking through a gap in the curtain. She's still naked and he lets himself look at her. She's different to Maria, taller with hard angles where Maria was petite with soft curves. Her skin is paler too and, even though he knows it's not true, there's something almost fragile about her in the morning glow, something that sets him on edge and sends a surge of protectiveness through him. He's infinitely aware she'd never stand for it. It only makes his longing worse.

 

“Karen?”

 

She turns to him, lets the curtain drop.

 

“Three more bombs,” she says. “Only one detonated. Nobody was hurt.”

 

He nods.

 

“They've apprehended five suspects and expect more arrests later today.”

 

“You need to go in?” he asks. “Your boss need you?”

 

She shakes her head. “I said I'd stay. I meant it.”

 

For a moment she just stands there looking at him and he thinks she might be unsure of what she should do next. He guesses there's a first time for everything.

 

So he makes it easy on her.

 

He holds out his hand and in a split second she's across the room, twining their fingers together and he's pulling her down into his lap. The burn is back instantaneously as is the throbbing between his legs and he knows she can feel him twitching against her thighs.

 

She kisses him, slips her tongue past his teeth and her hands slide up his arms and comb through his hair.

 

And it's going to be okay. All of it. Every last thing. They have this. They have each other. Most importantly they have time.

 

So when he stops kissing her and pulls back to look into her eyes he knows he's an idiot. He knows he's playing with fire and he should just shut up and let this happen. Stop the teasing and the burning. They both want it, there's no reason to hold back.

 

But there's something about the burn. There's something about the waiting, the anticipation. He can make this sweeter, if only for a moment.

 

They've done this whole thing backwards anyway.

 

So he scrapes his teeth down her shoulder, thumbs a nipple hard enough to make her gasp. He smiles and rests his hand on her hip.

 

“You hungry? You want breakfast?” he asks. “You ain't ever stayed for that … and I got eggs.”

 

_I got eggs…_

 

Smooth Castle, really fucking smooth.

 

There's a moment she looks murderous. Her eyes narrow and her mouth is a thin angry line.

 

And then just like that she smiles, kisses his jaw and rolls her hips against him so that he groans into her hair and immediately regrets his choices.

 

“Well,” she says. “Since you got eggs…”

 

He chuckles into her hair and a loose little giggle erupts from her chest.

 

“Hey, if you ain't gonna take breakfast seriously…”

 

She cuts him off with a kiss and he loses himself a little again. He thinks he's been **losing** parts of himself to her since the moment he first laid eyes on her. And it's fine. It's good even. She keeps them safer than he ever could.

 

“Yeah,” she says softly when she pulls away. “Yeah that would be nice. We've never done that.”

 

He can't help himself, he grins at her and he's sure it's the goofiest fucking grin he's ever given anyone in his whole life. She laughs again and brushes her lips on his and it would almost feel innocent if not for the slick sweep of her cunt down his cock. But then she stands and pulls him up with her.

 

“Come on then,” she says. “I'm starving.”

 

He tosses her one of his shirts, pulls on a pair of sweatpants and follows her into the kitchen.

 

~~~

 

He makes French toast, drowns it in maple syrup, and brews coffee.

 

She watches him and asks if she can help but he waves her off. He wants - no he _needs_ \- to do this for her. There's something about just being in this space with her, this painful domesticity and the warm and complete belief that neither of them are going to leave. This is where they are and for now, this is where they'll stay.

 

He remembers where he was a year ago and he’s grateful for it for putting him on the path to here. But at the same time he has no desire to go back. No desire to go to the loss and the longing, the pain and the rage.

  

He remembers. She does too. That's enough.

 

His phone beeps and he goes to his coat, pulls it out of his pocket. The battery is about to die but Curtis’ message - the one he stubbornly refused to read - still flickers on the screen.

 

He opens his texts and shakes his head.

 

_Do what you know you need to. Don't get in your own way. And get some damn sleep._

 

He’s done the latter. He's still working on the other two, but as he glances over at Karen sitting cross-legged at the counter pushing the hair out of her eyes, it's looking like he might get there.

 

He goes to her, puts his hand on her shoulder and pulls her to his chest, kisses the top of her head, before grabbing the two mugs of coffee out the machine.

 

She smiles at him.

 

Yes, it really is looking good.

 

~~~

 

She takes him to bed.

 

Properly.

 

She takes him the way a woman takes a man she loves more than she should.

 

And he takes her right back.

 

He kneels on the floor between her splayed thighs, drowning in the taste of her as she climaxes, her body rolling forward in hard waves and his fingers still pumping inside her as she spasms.

 

Her mouth is obscene, her words even worse.

 

So were his.

 

She doesn't give him time to breathe.

 

She drags him up to her, licks herself off his lips and then, one hand tight on his throat, the other gripping his shoulder, she straddles him and drives herself down on his cock.

 

He loses time again but it's not from fatigue. His world becomes only her, her hands, her mouth, that sweet hot space between her legs that in this moment belongs to both of them. And he gives himself up to it in much the same way a man gives himself up to a fate he knows he can't control.

 

It burns, but they always have. From the inside out and the outside in.

 

He sobs her name as he comes, hands in her hair and forehead pressed to hers.

 

_Karen…_

 

_Karen Page._

 

Afterwards, when he can focus again, he lies on his side, trailing his fingers down her spine. She's warm and sated, sleepy and half drunk from love and sex and release.

 

He takes a while to formulate his thoughts, longer to speak even when he has the words.

 

“What do we do now?” he asks. He should be scared of this question and in some strange way he is, but he's glad he asked it all the same. It doesn't feel unsafe. It doesn't feel like he's showing her anything he shouldn't.

 

She watches him for a moment and then reaches across the distance between them, kisses him soft and slow.

 

“We talk, we listen, we find a way.”

 

“You really believe that?”

 

She runs a finger down his cheek, touches his lips with her thumb.

 

“Someone told me once to hold onto what I love. To hold on and never let go.”

 

“Good advice,” he says dryly and she grins at him briefly before she sobers again.

 

“So I'm gonna hold onto this even if you can't yet.”

 

It sounds so simple and he's not naive enough to think it'll be that easy.

 

But they're here together and they're not going to lie or hide or walk away.

 

He squeezes her fingers in his, slides his arms around her so that her back is pressed against his belly and her hair is tickling his face. He lowers his lips to her shoulder, breathes in deeply.

 

Maybe he can't bring himself to hold onto this yet but he can hold onto her and for now that's enough.

 


End file.
